NEW DELHI: The electoral battle to win Uttar Pradesh is now in the third phase. Voters of 16 districts of the state are voting to choose their representatives for the 59 assembly seats in this round.
The stakes are high for both the contenders – the ruling BJP and its main challenger – the Samajwadi Party.
The Yogi-Adityanath-led BJP would want to repeat its 2017 performance when it swept the region winning 83% of the 59 seats. The saffron party won 49 seats and was runner-up in 9 seats.
Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party had a disastrous showing in 2017 and could manage victory in only 8 seats while it was the runner up in 31 seats.
The other two contenders in the electoral fray on these 59 seats – the Congress and the Bahujan Samaj Party – could manage to win only 1 seat each in the 2017 elections.

BJP’s dominance
A look at these numbers show the complete dominance of the BJP in the 2017 elections. The saffron party won all seats in 10 out of the 16 districts that are voting in the third round.
In Kanpur, the BJP won 11 of the 14 seats. The only district where the SP performed well was Mainpuri.

Margin of victory
The BJP’s victory was comprehensive in several of the 53 seats. It won 19 seats with a victory margin between 10% and 20% and 13 seats between 20% and 30%. On 4 seats, it registered a win with a vote margin above 30%. The Samajwadi Party could win only 2 seats with a victory margin above 10%.

Now, let’s look at BJP’s victory margins in terms of number of votes. The ruling party won 20 seats with a victory margin of over 40,000 votes and another 26 seats with a margin between 10,000 and 40,000 votes.

Samajwadi Party will hope to repeat its 2012 performance
For the Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party, the third phase is indeed crucial as it comprises regions that are its traditional strongholds.
If the Samajwadi Party has to pose any real challenge to the BJP, it will have to perform a lot better in this region.
The SP would hope to repeat its performance of the 2012 assembly elections when it had won 37 of these 59 seats. The BSP had then won 10 and the BJP only 8.
In 2017, the Samajwadi Party lost 29 seats that it had won in 2012 to the BJP.

Division of Votes
Now, let’s look at the gains the parties made in 2017 because of the division of votes due to three-cornered contests on many of these seats.
On 38 of the 59 seats of this round, the margin of victory or defeat was less than the votes polled by the party that was in the third position.
The BJP won 29 such seats while the Samajwadi Party emerged victorious on 6. The BSP and the Congress gained one seat each.
It is interesting to note that the Bahujan Samaj Party was in the third position in 43 seats while the SP on 9 and the Congress on 6.
The BSP helped BJP on 22 seats, the Samajwadi Party on 4 seats and the Congress on 1 seat.
Similarly, the SP at 3rd position helped the BJP on 6 seats.

So, the Mayawati-led BSP played a key role in dividing the votes and helped the other parties. However, since the BJP’s victory in most of these seats was comprehensive, the Samajwadi Party will have to make huge gains to defeat the ruling party.