Uttar Pradesh: BJP’s 2019 Lok Sabha seat map matches its wins in 2022 Assembly

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In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP had won 62 of the 80 seats in Uttar Pradesh, with a vote share of 49.97 per cent. Mapping these seats onto Assembly segments shows that in 2019, the BJP stood first across as many as 275 of the 403 Assembly constituencies in 2019.

Three years later, the party has, effectively, repeated its performance.

Of the 255 seats, 222 are in the same Assembly segments where the party stood first in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. These seats are geographically spread across the state ­­– be it West UP and Central UP where the farmers’ protests posed challenges or Eastern UP.

Of the remaining 53 assembly segments where BJP stood first in 2019 Lok Sabha elections, 15 have been won by its two allies this time: 11 by Apna Dal (Soneylal) and 4 by Nishad Party.

Thus, taken together, BJP, with its allies, retained its lead in the same 237 Assembly segments where it stood first in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Of the 275 segments, the party ceded only 38 seats: 33 to SP, three to RLD and two to Congress.

This underlines how the party has not only been able to beat anti-incumbency and overcome public discontent over issues like unemployment, handling of Covid-19 or stray cattle, it  maintained its 2019 performance by expanding its support base across various caste groups. One tool for this, by many accounts, has been government welfare schemes. It also shows that the party was able to slow the pace of erosion of its support base following its decline in Lok Sabha seats to 62 in 2019 from a record high of 71 in 2014 when it got a vote share of 42.30 per cent.