Strong alliance of BJP

The broad social coalition that the BJP has built and respected in UP during the national and state elections over the past seven years has remained intact in this assembly election. An analysis of caste-wise vote preference data from Lokniti-CSDS’s post-election survey points to a story of consistency with respect to the BJP’s base. The party has also made some big gains from unexpected quarters. The SP improved its performance even among communities barring the upper castes, but this was clearly not enough to defeat the BJP.

BJP’s Social Base

The BJP managed to strengthen its traditionally staunch upper caste base with four-fifths of support not only from Brahmins, Thakurs and Vaishyas, but also its relatively recently developed support base of non-Yadav OBCs. successfully maintained. (OBC). This significant segment, which constitutes two-fifths of UP’s electorate, is widely expected to move away from the BJP due to the SP’s alliances with smaller caste-based parties such as the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party, the People’s Socialist Party, the Mahan Dal, and others. Was expected. Apna Dal (Kamerawadi) which caters to some non-core OBC areas like Rajbhar, Nonia, Chauhan, Kushwaha and Maurya. BJP’s senior backward class leaders like Swami Prasad Maurya, Dara Singh Chouhan and Dharam Singh Saini joining the SP were also expected to damage the BJP base in their respective areas. However, post-poll data shows that the BJP is actually getting more support from these constituencies, barring Rajbhar. For example in Maurya-Khushwaha-Kori communities, the party increased its vote share from 56% to 64%. The BJP also benefited a lot from the shepherds and potters. The only non-Yadav OBC community where the BJP has lost some support is the Mallahs. Lokniti’s survey shows that the BJP lost 11 percentage points of support among the Mallahs. Nonetheless, the BJP was still well ahead of the SP among non-Yadav OBCs, garnering more than three-fifths of its votes.

The BJP made some very significant gains among Dalits: Jatavs and non-Jatavs. It got two-fifths of support from non-Jatav Dalits as against one-third last time. It made some of its most impressive foothold among Jatav Dalits, the community that has stood with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) through thick and thin in the past, securing 21%, or nearly a fifth, of the vote, more than double of 2017. The BSP’s vote share among Jatavs declined from 87% to just 65%. Among the non-Jatavs, who had moved away from the party even before the last few elections, the BSP’s vote share also declined significantly. This indicates that the existence of BSP is under threat. Interestingly, this time the BSP’s decline among non-Jatav Dalits benefited the SP more than the BJP. But that was not enough.

A major impediment to the SP’s failure to make substantial inroads among Dalits and lower OBCs was the stronger belief among them about the dominance of Yadavs under Akhilesh Yadav’s rule than the perceived Thakurism under Yogi Adityanath’s regime. In the post-poll survey, even though the majority of voters were of the opinion that only the upper castes benefited from Mr. Adityanath’s rule (43% overall thought so), this sentiment was comparable to the sentiment recorded in the 2017 survey. I was very weak. Only Yadavs benefited from Mr. Yadav’s rule (54% said so).

Not being able to adequately mobilize its native Jat voters in favor of the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) alliance was perhaps another disappointment for the SP alliance, even though the party fared well in some of its traditional strongholds. Despite the active participation of the Jat community of western UP in the peasant movement and pre-poll noise about Jats returning to the RLD, a majority of Jats, our data indicate, voted for the BJP. A Jat-Muslim-Yadav alliance, which was expected in western UP before the election, did not happen in the entire region. It was limited to a few seats in the upper parts of the field. In fact, for the fourth straight election in UP, only Muslims and Yadavs (30% of the voters) consolidated behind the SP, giving it four-fifths of their support. The Hindu voters (besides Yadavs) seem to have been mobilized in favor of the BJP due to the massive convergence of Yadav and Muslim voters in favor of the SP. The complete inability of the Congress to draw the support of the upper castes from the BJP did not help the SP either.

In conclusion, it can be said that despite several governance issues, the caste arithmetic of the BJP could not be disbanded.

Mirza Asmer Baig is Professor in the Department of Political Science at Aligarh Muslim University; Shashikant Pandey is Professor in the Department of Political Science at Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Lucknow; Shreyas Sardesai is Research Associate at Lokniti-CSDS