UP: Is BJP's Victory Margin So Large That It Cannot Lose The Election?

UP has seen the party in power voted out in every single election since 1996 - five elections and five changes in the party in power.

The BJP won the last UP election in a landslide. A victory margin so big that many, if not most, observers sense that it cannot be overcome by the Opposition. Polls forecast that even though the BJP may lose 100 seats (from 325 down to 225 seats out of the 403 in UP), it would still win with a clear majority.

This clearly appears to be a solid, insurmountable foundation - but is it unprecedented? Not quite, because UP has always been a volatile state. The average margin of victory in all UP elections since 1997 is only just below this BJP landslide in 2017 (see figure 2).

In fact, UP has seen the party in power voted out in every single election since 1996 - five elections and five changes in the party in power.

However, the BJP has another distinct advantage as it fights this election - the Opposition has been so divided that the BJP can survive a larger than normal swing away in its popular vote (see Figure 4). If it faced a near-unified Opposition, the BJP would lose with a swing away of 5%, but with the Opposition fragmented the way it is, the swing away from the BJP would need to be significantly higher. So, how many voters can the BJP lose while remaining the winner of the election?