GETS TWO THIRDS WITH 159 SEATS :
Vijitha Herath secures record 716,715 preferences:
President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s National People’s Power (NPP) achieved an unprecedented landslide victory in the 2024 General Election securing 159 seats in the tenth Parliament of Sri Lanka.
This record breaking victory by NPP set a significant milestone in Sri Lankan political history marking the end of seven decades of domination in the political scene by the old political parties, bringing new hope for the people.
Vijitha Herath secured the highest number preference votes for the NPP from Gampaha District amounting to 716,715 votes which is the highest ever secured by a candidate at a general election so far.
Winning a total number of 159 Parliamentary seats with 141 won out of votes and 18 from the national list, the NPP set a new record by being the first to have won a two thirds majority in Parliament as a single party to achieve this feat under the Proportional Representation System. The NPP also broke another record by achieving the highest vote tally by a single party in Sri Lanka’s Parliamentary Election history by securing 6,863,186 votes surpassing the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna’s (SLPP) 2020 record of 6,853,693 votes.
Even though the voter turnout for the Parliamentary Election dropped to 69 percent from 79 percent in the recently held Presidential Election, the NPP’s total vote count surged 23 percent from 5.6 million to 6.8 million votes which has never happened before in Sri Lanka’s election history.
The NPP has also managed to make significant gains in the North and East winning the Jaffna district which will enable the President to be a leader who can unite the diverse communities in the country.
This landmark victory for the NPP is a testament which reflects clearly that majority of the people in the country are happy with the change of political culture and the direction in which the nation is steered since the election of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake and also portrayed that they trust him and have voted for a change in the way politics is done as declared in his NPP manifesto.
The NPP set another record by winning 21 out of the 22 electoral districts in the country with the only exception of Batticaloa where it still clinched a seat coming in second place.
The NPP’s victory winning 6,863,186 votes with a 61.56 percent lead over the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) which came in second place with only 1,968,716 votes obtained with a percentage of only 17.66 saw the largest ever difference in the total number of votes between the winning party and the party to come second in the Parliamentary Election history in the country.
The number of votes won in this year’s General election has increased by 1,228,271 more than the number of votes won by the NPP in the recent Presidential election. This shows that within a short period of 54 days after the end of the Presidential election, the NPP has been able to strengthen the confidence of the people quite significantly in them more than before.
Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who ran as the Presidential candidate of the NPP and became the President, received 5,634,915 votes in the presidential election and the number of votes received by the NPP in the General election was 6,863,186.
In the Presidential election, Sajith Premadasa came forward as a presidential candidate from the SJB and although the SJB won 4,363,035 votes in the Presidential election, the SJB only won 1,968,716 votes in this year’s General election. Accordingly, it appears that within a short period of 54 days after the end of the Presidential election, the voter base of SJB has decreased by 2,394,319 which has resulted in the SJB appearing to have suffered a setback.
Former President Ranil Wickremesinghe contested the last presidential election from the New Democratic Front (NDF). Although Wickremesinghe, who contested from this party, got 2,299,767 votes in the presidential election, the NDF as a party won only 500,835 votes in this year’s General election. In comparison with the number of votes obtained in the presidential election, the number of votes of the NDF has decreased by 1,798,932 within a short period of 54 days and the NDF as a party also appears to have suffered a major setback.
Namal Rajapaksa, who contested the 2024 presidential election from the SLPP, obtained 342,781 votes and the SLPP has obtained 350,429 votes in this year’s General election. Compared to the presidential election, the SLPP has achieved a slight increase of 7,648 votes in the General election. The SLPP who put forward Gotabaya Rajapaksa as its Presidential candidate in the 2019 presidential election, where he obtained 6,924,255 votes to win the presidency, and in the general election, he obtained a 2/3rd majority in the parliament by obtaining 6,853,693 votes. Therefore, it should not be forgotten that the SLPP that gained a two third majority in Parliament before, has dropped to this very low percentage of votes by totally losing its voter base within four years since 2020.
In the 2019 presidential election, Sajith Premadasa contested as the candidate of the SJB and received 5,564,239 votes, but in the 2020 General election, the SJB was able to obtain only 2,771,984 votes.
In the 2019 Presidential election, the NPP put forward Anura Kumara Dissanayake as its maiden presidential candidate and was able to get only 418,553 votes. In the 2020 General election, the NPP obtained 445,958 votes. In this year’s General election, the NPP received more than 6.8 million votes due to succeeding in raising the number of votes obtained in the last General election of nearly 450,000 by increasing the confidence of the people significantly within four years since 2020.
The other parties who won seats including seats from the national list to sit in the new parliament are SJB with 40 seats, ITAK with eight seats, NDF with five seats, SLPP and SLMC with three seats each, Sarvajana Balaya with one national list seat, UNP, DTNA, ACTC, ACMC, Jaffna Independent Group 17 and SLLP with 1 seat each.
The tenth Parliament with the newly elected 225 members will convene on November 21, 2024.
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