Indian National Congress returned to power in Punjab, in a landslide win.

It won 66 of the 104 seats, more than it needed to govern alone.

The Shiromani Akali Dal finished second, with 24 seats.

Its vote share — the slice of all ballots cast that went to one party — was 42.8%, well ahead of the runner-up's 27.6%.

The clearest story here was the winning party's own turnaround from the previous election.

It went from 38 seats to 66.

24 seats swung directly from the SAD to the INC, more than any other pair of parties that year.

Turnout also fell, -3.2 pp from the previous election.

A few numbers from that count are worth knowing on their own.

Qadian, Punjab saw the tightest finish of the count, decided by a margin — how far ahead the winner finished, in votes, over whoever came second — of 77 votes.

Guru Har Sahai, Punjab was the most one-sided result of the count, won by 57.9% of the vote.

Nabha, Punjab recorded the highest turnout of any seat, at 83.2%.

1 seat was an unopposed return that year — a seat where only one candidate stood, so no vote was needed to decide it.

Punjab's map was still fairly new: the Punjab Reorganisation Act took effect on 1 November 1966, when most of the state's territory formed the new state of Haryana, its hill districts transferred to Himachal Pradesh, and Chandigarh became a shared union territory capital.¹