The 1978 Maharashtra State Assembly election was held in March 1978 for the fifth term of the Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha. A total of 288 seats were contested. Congress factions (u) and (i) formed the government and Vasantdada Patil was sworn in again as the Chief Minister.
!colspan=10| |- align=center !style="background-color:#E9E9E9" class="unsortable"| !style="background-color:#E9E9E9" align=center|Political party<br> !style="background-color:#E9E9E9" |No. of candidates<br> !style="background-color:#E9E9E9" |No. of elected<br> !style="background-color:#E9E9E9" |Seat change<br> !style="background-color:#E9E9E9" |Number of votes<br> !style="background-color:#E9E9E9" |% of votes<br> !style="background-color:#E9E9E9" |Change in <br />vote % |- | |align="left"|Janata Party||215||99|| 99||5,701,399||27.99%|| 27.99% (New Party) |- | |align="left"|Indian National Congress||259||69|| 153||5,159,828||25.33%|| 31.03% |- | |align="left"|Indian National Congress (Indira)||203||62|| 62||3,735,308||18.34%|| 18.34% (New Party) |- | |align="left"|Peasants and Workers Party of India||88||13|| 6||1,129,172||5.54%|| 0.12% |- | |align="left"|Communist Party of India (Marxist)||12||9|| 8||345,008||1.69%|| 0.92% |- | |align="left"|All India Forward Bloc||6||3|| 1||166,497||0.82%|| 1.58% |- | |align="left"|Republican Party of India (Khobragade)||23||2|| 2||287,533||1.41%|| 1.41% (New Party) |- | |align="left"|Republican Party of India||25||2||||215,487||1.06%|| 2.71% |- | |align="left"|Communist Party of India||48||1|| 1||301,056||1.48%|| 1.25% |- | | 35 | 0 | 1 | 369,749 | 1.82% | 0.02% |- | | 5 | 0 | | 88,654 | 0.44% | 0.26% |- | |align="left"|Independents||894||28|| 5||2,864,023||14.06%|| 1.38% |-style="background-color:#E9E9E9" | |align="left"|Total||1819||288|| 18||20,367,221||67.59%|| 6.94% |-