It may seem far-fetched to use the outcome of the 2007 UP Assembly polls as an indicator of the forthcoming general elections,but if the voting patterns in those elections are replicated,Mayawati will win the lions share of seats from the state taking into account,also,the absence of the SP-Congress alliance and the new BJP-RLD combine. Delimitation,of course,makes calculating these numbers considerably more complex the coming Lok Sabha elections will be contested on redrawn constituencies,while the 2007 UP Assembly polls and 2004 Lok Sabha elections were held in previous constituencies. But theres a method behind the madness. First,the votes polled by the five major political parties in the state BSP,SP,BJP,Congress and RLD in the constituencies of the 2007 Assembly elections are matched with the newly delimited Assembly constituencies; then,these are added up for newly delimited Lok Sabha seats (most Lok Sabha constituencies have five Assembly segments). Based on these calculations,the BSP is expected to win around 46 out of 80 seats. As convoluted as this seems,pollsters suggest that this could be the best way of projecting the fortunes of political parties fortunes in individual Lok Sabha constituencies,given the absence of post-delimitation poll data. Once the current Assembly constituencies are identified and matched to the best fit with old assembly constituencies,one would be able to ascertain the changing fortunes of individual political parties in Lok Sabha constituencies as they exist after delimitation, said Sanjay Kumar of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS),who has worked extensively on poll-related data. For example,using this method,The Indian Express found: If the SP and Congress do contest together,both may end up backing Mayawati against the wall. If the SP and Congress decide to bury their differences,they win as many as 51 seats,provided all Congress supporters vote alongside the SP during the Lok Sabha polls. This alliance would also dent the BJP-RLD combines chances. In such a scenario,the BSP will be expected to retain its current tally of 18 seats and the BJP-RLD combine would be able to win only 11 seats. Of course,reality cannot be shoved aside entirely even in speculative calculations. It is believed that a substantial portion of votes polled by the Congress during 2007 Assembly elections could be attributed to the partys opposition to the SPs alleged misrule in the state. So,it is unlikely that all Congress voters would be inclined to side with the SP in case of a SP-Congress alliance. In such a situation,a conservative estimate of the SP-Congress alliances political fortune could be drawn by transferring estimates of only about half the votes polled by Congress in individual constituencies to the SP. In that case,while the BSP could be expected to improve its performance from the current tally of 18 seat to 28,the SP-Congress combine would still hold the largest share of 38 seats from the Lok Sabha polls with the BJP-RLD combine getting 14 seats. Incidentally,if the BJP and the Ajit Singh-led RLD contest together and if the SP and Congress contest separately,the BJP-RLD combine is likely to win more seats than the Samajwadi Party. In this scenario,the BJP-RLD combine could be expected to win 17 seats as against only 15 seats that SP would retain from its current tally of 39 seats. However,Sanjay Kumar from CSDS adds a caveat. Any change in the composition of voters in the Assembly constituencies after the delimitation may reduce the accuracy of the 2007 data. The major pitfall of this approach is that even if one identifies and matches the old and redrawn constituencies,there will be several cases where the composition of voters would have changed, says Kumar. However,statistically,this would work equally in favour or against individual political parties with gains and losses in individual constituencies taken care of by the losses or gains of the rival political parties,he says Despite some pitfalls and given the lack of booth-wise polling for individual parties this is the best way of figuring the strength of parties in individual Lok Sabha constituencies after the delimitation, says Kumar.
