UP Polls 2017: Akhilesh Yadav's Samajwadi Party has forged an alliance with the Congress
Highlights
- Samajwadi Party, Congress drew 43% vote share in 2012 UP polls
- In 2014 general elections, BJP won equivalent of 337 of 403 seats
- SP-Congress must retain core vote share of 36% to stand a chance in 2017
As chief minister Akhilesh Yadav seeks to be re-elected in Uttar Pradesh, will his Samajwadi Party's strategic alliance with the Congress help him in his bid? Yes, if the state votes like it did five years ago in the assembly elections of 2012. No, if it votes the way it did in the 2014 general elections.
In 2012, Akhilesh Yadav led his party to victory in UP, winning 226 of the state's 403 assembly seats. The Samajwadi Party got 29 per cent of the votes. The Congress, with 14 per cent vote share, had won 38 seats. In quite a few seats the Congress was second.
If the two parties had fought that election together as they are now, they would've won 43 per cent of the vote share, with the Samajwadi Party winning 270 seats and the Congress 82. It would have meant 88 more seats with a combined total of 352 - a landslide win.
The additional seats would have come mostly at the cost of Mayawati's BSP. Her party, which had won 80 seats in 2012, would've won only 20 seats if the SP and Congress had been partners then.
The 2014 general election, however, was a complete contrast. The BJP, which had won only 47 seats with its 15 per cent vote share in 2012, rode a Modi wave to win 71 of UP's 80 parliamentary seats along with ally Apna Dal, equal to 337 assembly seats.
If the Samajwadi Party, which got 20 per cent votes for five Lok Sabha seats or 42 assembly seats, and the Congress - eight per cent votes for two Lok Sabha seats (15 assembly seats) - had been partners in 2014, they would've together won the equivalent of 85 assembly seats, denting the BJP's number by about only 27 seats only.
On numbers, the UP alliance is not quite as "grand" as the one that the Congress had built for the 2015 Bihar assembly elections with Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal United and Lalu Prasad's RJD. The coming together of the three parties had meant that a consolidation of their core votes added up to 47 per cent of the vote share.
The core votes of the Samajwadi Party and the Congress add up to 36 per cent in UP. The two parties are fighting hard to hold on to the their core support bases in the face of a tough challenge from both the BJP and the BSP.
The UP elections are being held in seven phases. Votes will be counted on March 11.