Elections 2019: Will SP-BSP alliance maths trump Modi's chemistry in UP?

Modi had both maths and chemistry on his side in 2014 but the combination may not be as potent in 2019

Uttar Pradesh sends 80 members to the Lok Sabha, and the success and failure in this one state can often make or break a party or prime minister hopeful’s chances. It is no surprise that it was UP that lifted Narendra Modi’s BJP in 2014 to power by handing it 73 seats (two to their ally Apna Dal) out of these 80.

In the 2014 general elections, the two parties that largely dominated Uttar Pradesh politics in the previous decade and half, the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party were reduced in stature. SP won only five Lok Sabha seats with 22.3 per cent while BSP did not win any, despite winning 19.8 per cent of the votes. The Congress party won two seats with 7.5 per cent of the votes.

As the BJP kept decimating other parties in state election after state election (till 2018), it was felt that any reasonable challenge to the BJP could be mounted only if all opposition parties came together to contest. This was demonstrated in Bihar where the Mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) of JDU, RJD and INC halted the BJP’s victory march in 2015. With UP and Bihar being keys to forming government at the centre will a similar grand alliance for UP help defeat the BJP in 2019 general elections? Mathematically, SP, BSP and the Congress coming together would trump the BJP even in Uttar Pradesh, but election results are not just pure arithmetic, especially since the Congess’ membership of such an alliance itself is in doubt.

We studied closely contested elections in Uttar Pradesh in 2014 to see if an SP-BSP alliance can significantly impact the results. For the purpose of this analysis, a contest is considered close when the margin of victory is less than the votes secured by the second runner-up. In 2014, there were 41 such contests in UP with the BJP winning 38 of those while SP had won three. SP and BSP were runners-up on 18 seats each while on two seats the Congress was the runner-up.

We built two scenarios for an alliance. In one scenario, the alliance partner is able to transfer half of its vote to the other in a contest. In the second, one partner is able to transfer 80 per cent of the votes to the other. Calculating on this basis takes us to the following conclusions for these closely contested 41 seats.

Scenario 1 (50 per cent votes transferred)

Close contests (41 seats): With a 50 per cent vote transfer, we find that the BJP drops 12 seats out of these 38 that it holds (out of a total of 41 close contests). The BSP is likely to pick up 4 of these while the SP will pick 8 taking its total to 11 seats (out of these 41).
 

 

Overall (all 80 seats): Of the remaining 39 seats in UP that weren't close contests, assuming that the voting positions will  remain the same as in 2014, the BJP will retain 33 out of these 39 contests taking its total to 59 out of 80. The SP climbs to 13 while the BSP climbs to 4. INC and Apna Dal stay at two each.

Scenario 2 (80 per cent votes transferred)

Close contests (41 seats): If SP and BSP are able to transfer 80 per cent of their votes to the other in close contests, then the picture changes substantially. BJP ends up losing 23 out of the 38 seats it holds. The BSP picks 12 of these while the SP picks 11.

Overall (80 seats): The overall picture would also change substantially in this scenario as the BJP will likely end up with 48 seats (instead of 71) in UP.

Excluding statistical outliers

While 2014 would be the obvious benchmark to see how alliance arithmetic would change the seat projections, it may not be the best benchmark. In statistics extreme values can be considered outliers and therefore excluded from final analysis. 2014 can also be considered an aberration and it may be the incorrect benchmark to analyse political arithmetic for a state as complex as Uttar Pradesh.

In 2014, Narendra Modi ended up mastering both the arithmetic of the political game and its chemistry. The arithmetic was mastered by shrewd candidate selection, targeting of OBCs, astute alliance (like with Apna Dal). This was topped with the chemistry of Modi’s charisma. It was this potent combination of arithmetic and chemistry that helped the BJP win an incredible 71 seats on its own in the state.

As 2019 begins, both the arithmetic and the chemistry seem to be wearing thin. The results of the assembly polls in three Hindi heartland states point towards a diminishing return for Brand Modi, while the results of bypolls in the state of UP indicate to arithmetic failure as well. Therefore 2014 is perhaps the wrong base to analyse how UP will behave in general elections 2019. 2009 would perhaps be closer to the UP average.

Taking 2009 into account

In 2009, 67 out of 80 Lok Sabha seats saw close contests in the state. Out of these 67, the BJP held 8 seats, BSP 20, Congress 16, SP 19 and Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) 4.

Close contests

If SP and BSP transfer half of their votes to the partner then these 67 close contests would result in BJP being reduced to 2 seats. The SP would add one to go to 20 while BSP would go to 25 seats.

Overall

With this vote transfer the overall general election picture for UP looks like this. The BJP gets reduced to just 4 seats instead of 10 it won in 2009.

Surprisingly even with 80% vote transfer on 2009 numbers, the overall result does not change. While in 2014 the BJP’s performance may be considered an outlier, the same is probably true for the Congress’ performance in 2009.

Each election is different, and although the last two elections in UP, the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and the 2017 Vidhan Sabha polls saw BJP win with an unprecedented majority, the parliamentary bypoll in Gorakhpur and Phoolpur portrayed a different picture. But one thing is nevertheless certain. Whatever may be nature of the alliance among opposition parties and the degree of vote transfer, BJP will lose a substantial number of Lok Sabha seats from Uttar Pradesh in the coming Lok Sabha elections. That is evident from the arithmetic of elections in India's largest state, politics notwithstanding. Twitter: @Bhayankur