Going by 2014, BJP ahead in 6 of 8 western UP seats

Western Uttar Pradesh's eight Lok Sabha seats that went to the polls on Thursday in the first phase of the 2019 elections had been won convincingly by the BJP in 2014 with margins of over two lakh votes. It had got over 50 per cent votes in four seats and also benefited from lack of opposition unity.

This year, the Bharatiya Janata Party is pitted against the Samajwadi Party-Bahujan Samaj Party-Rashtriya Lok Dal alliance as well as the Congress, but data from 2014 shows that the combined vote share of the three alliance partners is greater than that of the BJP only on two seats. If Congress votes are also added, the vote share of combined opposition gets bigger on two more seats.

The BJP performance in Western Uttar Pradesh in 2014 appears better than its performance in other regions of the state.

The party polled 42.63 per cent votes in the entire state and this comes close to 41.97 per cent vote share of the SP and the BSP taken together. If the 7.53 per cent of Congress is added, the number goes up to 49.50.

But election result are normally not an aggregation of numbers as evidenced during the Kairana parliamentary bypoll and can depend on a combination of factors such as the cohesion of an alliance and perception about the party and the candidate.

Going by the 2014 results, the BJP had a greater vote share than the combined opposition - the SP, BSP and RLD - in Kairana but lost the presitious bypoll last year.

Apart from Kairana, BJP got over 50 per cent votes in the last general elections in Muzaffarnagar, Ghaziabad and Gautam Buddh Nagar.

Among the eight seats, Saharanpur appears the best bet for Congress where its candidate finished second in 2014. The BJP scored its least percentage of votes in Saharanpur, yet won the seat due to division of opposition votes. The party won the Ghaziabad seat with the biggest margin of 5.66 lakh votes.

In Ghaziabad, the 2014 vote breakup was the BJP with 56.2 per cent, the Congress with 14.24, the BSP 12.89 and the SP 7.97 per cent.

The BJP got 42.15 per cent votes in Baghpat, the BSP 14.11 per cent, the SP 21.26 and the RLD 19.86 per cent.

In Gautam Buddh Nagar against BJP's 50 percent, the SP got 26.64 per cent, the BSP 16.53 per cent and the Congress 1.06.

In Meerut, the figures were BJP (47.86), BSP (27), SP (19.01) and Congress (3.85), while in Bijnor, BJP (45.92), BSP (21.70), SP (26.51) and RLD (2.30).

In Muzaffarnagar, the percentages were BJP (58.98), BSP (22.77), SP (14.52), and Congress (1.17), and in Kairana, BJP (50.54), BSP (14.33), SP (29.39) and RLD (3.81).

In Saharanpur, the percentages were BJP (39.49), BSP (19.67), SP (4.42) and Congress (34.14).

--IANS

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