Samajwadi Party-Congress pact would mean sweep in 2012, rout in 2014

LUCKNOW: If you go by the 2014 Lok Sabha results, there's only one way the 2017 assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh will go: a BJP sweep. BJP's 42.3% vote share helped it win 71 of the state's 80 Lok Sabha seats. This means, of the 403 assembly segments in the state, it was ahead in 328.

In comparison, Samajwadi Party's vote share was only 22.2%, and Congress was at 7.5%. With this, SP won five seats (translates into leads in 42 assembly segments) and Congress won two (equivalent to 15 assembly seats). It's been over two and a half years since the 2014 election. And SP has joined hands with Congress (RLD could also be part of this alliance), making the usual four-cornered contest in UP - SP vs BSP vs BJP vs Congress - a three-cornered fight. Does that alter equations?

If you assume that all conditions that favoured BJP in 2014 are intact, then nothing much changes with SP and Congress joining hands. BJP is still likely to get 300-plus seats.

But obviously many things have changed since 2014. More crucially, this is an assembly election where a host of local issues - including who will be chief minister - are likely to come into play. For instance, how Akhilesh Yadav performed as CM will be a major factor in this election, while it was of little consequence in 2014. Still, if you go just by numbers, while SP and Congress between them led in 57 seats fighting separately, the SP-Congress-RLD combine was ahead in 87 assembly segments in 2014. The combine also put up a close fight in 50 assembly segments, indicating it could swing either way now. In 11 of these 50 segments, the combine trailed BJP by less than 5,000 votes; in 19, they were behind by 10,000 votes or less; and in 20, the combine lagged behind by less than 20,000 votes.

So, even if the Modi wave were to be intact and people voted exactly the way they did in 2014, the combine is likely to win 87 seats and have a fair chance in another 50.
But the combine is banking on changed circumstances to cross the 202 mark in a house of 403. For the combine, the best-case scenario is a repeat of 2012.

In the assembly elections that year, SP won 224 seats with a 29.3% vote share and Congress won 28 seats with a 11.7% vote share. In contrast, BJP's vote share was 15% and it won 47 seats. So, simple arithmetic would mean a very comfortable majority for the combine.

But such a simple addition would be misleading. The very fact that Congress and SP have joined hands indicates they were not comfortable going it alone.

Ground reports suggest the surge in Hindutva politics after Modi's victory in 2014 has kept polarisation alive and may impact forthcoming assembly elections. BJP has already given tickets to four accused in the Muzaffarnagar riots. In such a scenario, Muslims are looking for a party or an alliance that can stop BJP from coming to power. BSP is also eyeing minority votes and has given tickets to 97 Muslims. However, poll observers feel that instead of voting en bloc for a party, Muslims would prefer to vote for the candidate best placed to defeat BJP in their constituency. Muslims make up nearly 20% of UP's population.

"In a four-cornered contest, Muslims would have to choose from among SP, Congress and BSP. However, in case of an alliance, the choice will be reduced to between SP-Congress and BSP," said a Lucknow-based poll analyst.

He pointed out that the situation now is similar to the 1993 assembly elections, when BSP and SP joined hands, making it a three-cornered contest, and were able to stall the BJP march despite the fact that the Ram temple movement was at its peak and the polls were held after the Babri Masjid demolition. BSP had then won 67 seats with 11.12% vote share, and SP 109 with 19.94% vote share. Together, the alliance won 176 seats with around 31% of the votes. BJP got 174 seats despite getting 33.31% votes.

The SP-BSP alliance formed the government with Mulayam Singh Yadav as CM with the support of Congress and other small parties.

Analysts said the voting pattern mostly depends on the wave at the ground level and the ability of the parties to hold on to their vote banks. For an alliance to work, a party needs to transfer its votes to the partner in the seat it is not contesting. They pointed out that a similar pre-poll alliance between BSP-Congress in the 1996 assembly elections was not successful. BSP had then won 67 seats with 19.64% of the votes and Congress 33 seats with 8.35% of the votes. BSP was able to transfer its Dalit votes to Congress in the seats contested by the latter. However, upper castes supporting Congress did not vote for BSP.

Going by that, an SP-Congress alliance will work only if SP holds on to its vote bank comprising Yadavs, Muslims and some of the most backward classes. Congress will have to ensure that it attracts Muslims and floating votes among Dalits and a section of upper castes, particularly Brahmins.