Did the decision not to forge an alliance with AAP cost Congress victory in the Haryana assembly elections? Not really, if we look solely at the arithmetic. There were only three seats of the 53 that Congress did not win in which AAP got more votes than the margin for the eventual winner.
Thus, even if we were to assume that a Congress-AAP alliance would have garnered all of the votes that Congress and AAP got contesting on their own, the alliance would at best have won three more seats taking the tally to 40 against the 37 that Congress actually won.
Of the three seats, only one was actually won by the BJP. That was Assandh in Karnal district, where BJP got 54,761 votes, beating the Congress tally of 52,455 by 2,306 votes. The AAP candidate here received 4,290 votes.
The other two seats were the only ones that INLD won in the state – Dabwali and Rania in Sirsa district.
In Dabwali, INLD got 56,074 votes and Congress 55,464 which meant INLD won by 610 votes. The AAP candidate got 6,606 votes. In Rania, INLD got 43,914 and Congress 39,723 to lose by 4,191 votes. AAP got 4,697 votes.
If we assume the votes would have been seamlessly transferred between Congress and AAP, these three seats could have been won by an alliance between the two. That would have meant 47 seats to BJP, 40 to the Congress-AAP alliance and none for INLD, which would not have changed the outcome though reducing the gap.
Of course, alliances are not just about arithmetic, but whether an alliance between the two parties would have generated a buzz for AAP and Congress is a moot question.