Murmu elected Prez: A look at vote percentages in all presidential polls

Droupadi Murmu defeated the opposition's candidate Yashwant Sinha, winning 64.03 per cent of the total votes polled on Thursday

 Droupadi Murmu, the National Democratic Alliance's (NDA) candidate, became the youngest and the first tribal woman to be elected as the President of India. She would be the 15th President of the Republic of India. Murmu defeated the opposition's candidate Yashwant Sinha, winning 64.03 per cent of the total votes polled.

Murmu is only the second woman, after Pratibha Patil, to hold the highest constitutional position in the country. Chief Justice of India NV Ramana will administer the oath of office on July 25.

According to the official data, Murmu won a total of 6,76,803 votes against Sinha's 3,80,177 votes. 

The chart below looks at the votes polled by winning and losing candidates in presidential elections since 1952 when India elected the first president.

Infogram

 

Since the country's independence in 1947, India has seen 15 different Presidential elections. The vote share of the winning candidate topped 90 per cent only thrice in 1957, 1962 and 1997.

In 1957 Rajendra Prasad was elected as the President of India, winning 98.99 per cent of the votes. In 1962, S Radhakrishnan won 98.25 per cent of the votes. KR Narayanan won 94.97 per cent votes in 1997.

However, VV Giri, elected to the top post in 1969, is the only winner to get a vote share of less than 50 per cent, at 48.01 per cent. That year, the second preferential votes had to be counted to ascertain the final winner.

In 2002, APJ Abdul Kalam came close to winning 90 per cent of the votes and 89.58 per cent of the total votes polled.

Murmu's predecessor, Ram Nath Kovind, had won 65.65 per cent of the votes defeating Meira Kumar, who won 34.35 per cent of the total votes.

List of winning and losing Presidential candidates

Year	Winning Candidate	Losing Candidate
1952	Rajendra Prasad	KT Shah
1957	Rajendra Prasad	Chowdhry Hari Ram
1962	S Radhakrishnan	Chowdhry Hari Ram
1967	Zakir Husain	Koka Subba Rao
1969	VV Giri	Neelam Sanjiva Reddy
1974	Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed	Tridib Chaudhuri
1977	Neelam Sanjiva Reddy	-
1982	Zail Singh	Hans Raj Khanna
1987	R Venkataraman	VR Krishna Iyer
1992	Shankar Dyal Sharma	George Gilbert Swell
1997	KR Narayanan	TN Seshan
2002	APJ Abdul Kalam	Lakshmi Sahgal
2007	Pratibha Patil	Bhairon Singh Shekhawat
2012	Pranab Mukherjee	PA Sangma
2017	Ram Nath Kovind	Meira Kumar
2022	Droupadi Murmu	Yashwant Sinha