This is what explains some of the big loss of seats for the SP in several regions. The SP lost most of its seats in Ruhelkhand, Doab and East. In each of these the party held on to or improved its vote share. The two regions where the SP lost some votes — West and North East — account for a loss of merely 10 seats for the SP.

A formal explanation like this begs the real political questions: why did the SP not fall behind? Why was it overtaken by the BSP? There is no evidence to support Mulayam Singh Yadav’s explanation that blamed the EC. Let us try out two more plausible responses.

The first answer is a straight caste-based vote bank answer. You could say that the SP managed to hold on to its Yadav-Muslim vote banks, while every other caste polarised around the BSP in order to defeat the SP.

The evidence does not quite support this reading. Far from a simple retention, we get evidence of a lot of churn. Of those who voted for the SP in the last assembly elections, about one-third moved away this time, more than in the case of the BSP voters. The SP could retain only 44 of the 143 seats it won last time. The yadav voters did support the SP as much as last time, more towards the latter half of the elections, but there was no additional polarisation as in the case of jatavs for the BSP this time.

... contd.