The bypolls, whose results will be declared on March 14, are being viewed as a “rehearsal” for the 2019 general elections.
THE BJP’s stunning defeat at the hands of the Samajwadi Party, which was helped by the Bahujan Samaj Party, in bypolls to Gorakhpur and Phulpur Wednesday has sparked off talk of an SP-BSP alliance in the run-up to the 2019 general elections.
The potential of that arithmetic is appealing to both.
For, an analysis of constituencywise poll data of the last election held in the state, the 2017 assembly elections, shows that the BJP may lose as many as 50 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh when SP and BSP votes are combined.
In fact, SP and BSP votes pooled together will translate to at least 57 of the 80 seats in the state for the alliance. In contrast, BJP gets only 23.
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The BJP-led NDA won 73 of 80 Lok Sabha seats during 2014 Lok Sabha elections where rivals SP and BSP had contested separately.
Contesting separately, these two parties were subsequently swept away by the BJP during the Assembly elections in the state last year.
While SP won 47 Assembly seats, BSP could win only 19 in the 403-member UP assembly. SP’s alliance partner Congress, too, fared badly winning only seven seats. In comparison, the BJP, with is alliance with two smaller regional parties, won 325 Assembly seats.
But a Lok Sabha-wise pooling of BSP and SP-Congress’s votes from the latest election (2017 Assembly election) suggests that BJP stares an uphill arithmetic challenge if its both its rivals close ranks for 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
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The 2017 Assembly election data suggest that the Opposition, which won only seven seats against the BJP-led alliance, has the vote pool to win additional 50 seats. The BJP, in fact, will shrink from 73 (including two seats of its alliance partner) to merely 23.
The sheer gravity of this arithmetic vote pooling is emphasised by margins that one estimates from 2017 assembly votes.
The Opposition SP-BSP have, on an average, a lead of 1.45 lakh votes across 57 Lok Sabha seats it is projected to win according to the vote pooling.
The BJP’s average lead across 23 seats is a meagre 58,000 votes. This pales in comparison to BJP’s 2014 Lok Sabha victory where, on an average, it had a lead of 1.88 lakh votes across 73 Lok Sabha seats.
Additionally, while 55 of 73 wins in 2014 Lok Sabha seats had a victory margin of over 1 lakh votes, the estimates of its 23 wins against SP-BSP vote pooling suggest that BJP can command more than 1-lakh margin only in four Lok Sabha constituencies – Varanasi, Mathura, Ghaziabad and Gautam Buddha Nagar.
These figures are derived by simple pooling of the votes won by the SP and BSP candidates in 2017 Assembly elections.
Since SP had contested in an alliance with the Congress, votes polled by the Congress have been considered as SP votes across constituencies where the Samajwadi Party did not field candidates. Given both these parties engaged in friendly contest in few Assembly constituencies, the votes of SP have been considered for these projections.
A similar vote pooling exercise from 2014 Lok Sabha elections suggest that BJP remained a formidable challenge to the pooled votes of SP and BSP during that elections. In fact, pooling of SP and BSP votes during 2014 Lok Sabha elections shows that the Opposition alliance could win only 41 Lok Sabha seats while the BJP could still have won 37 seats against their combined might.
While these estimates projected on the basis of different arithmetic combinations from different elections provide an understanding of the political challenge, they cannot be said to the real estimate of actual polls that follow.
Whether electoral arithmetic is translated on the ground depends heavily upon chemistry among the cadres of two political parties and their support bases. Since no two elections are same, the projection from one election to the other is merely a guide to the shape of the contest and cannot replace the context and nature of actual contests.
However, the bypolls in Gorakhpur and Phulpur suggest that the BSP’s electoral support base showed a chemistry that worked in favour of the SP’s arithmetic against the BJP in the constituencies vacated by the state chief minister and deputy chief minister respectively. But the question remains about the inclination of SP support base demonstrating similar chemistry towards BSP in the eventuality of alliance during elections. Seat-sharing in an alliance also creates antagonism among party cadres which can backfire.
What is clear, however, is that if the SP and BSP come together, the BJP could face a serious challenge.