Much ado about nothing? SP’s poor MP show meant it may have hurt Cong in only 5 seats

SP fielded candidates in 71 seats, BJP won 55, Cong 15. In 5, Cong and SP votes were more than BJP.

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan with Union Ministers Jyotiraditya Scindia, Ashwini Vaishnaw and Narendra Singh Tomar and BJP State President VD Sharma celebrate the party's lead during counting of votes for MP Assembly elections, in Bhopal, Sunday, Dec. 3, 2023. (PTI Photo)

In Madhya Pradesh, the Uttar Pradesh-based Samajwadi Party, a member of the Opposition INDIA bloc, had entered the fray with plenty of fanfare. But Sunday’s results spelled a disappointing outcome for the party, which failed to win any seat and registered less than 1% of the vote share in 55 of the 71 seats it contested.

While the Congress’s defeat in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan has diminished its bargaining power in the much anticipated seat-sharing negotiations with its INDIA partners for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the row between the SP and the Congress over an alliance for these state polls appears to have had little impact on the results.

SP seats

The SP failed to win a single seat in the 71 it contested. In fact, its performance was so poor, it did not even play the role of spoilsport by cutting into the Congress’s vote share.

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Of the 71 seats with SP candidates, the BJP won 55, the Congress 15 and newcomer Bharat Adivasi Party won a single seat. In the 55 seats that the BJP won, the Congress and SP’s combined votes exceeded the saffron party’s tally in just five seats, suggesting that even if the parties had struck a pre-poll alliance, it would have had little impact overall given the BJP’s landslide 163-seat victory.

SP-Cong vs BJP

The SP got more than 1% of the vote in just 16 seats and more than 5% of the vote in seven seats. Except in the Niwari constituency, the party was unable to win more than a sixth of the vote in any seat, forcing 70 of its candidates to forfeit their deposits.