 You're watching News Made Easy, I'm Anandya Chakravarty, exit polls are predicting a comfortable majority for the BJP in Uttar Pradesh and that should actually not surprise anyone because remember in 2019 in the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP and its allies together had more than 51% of the vote share and that should enable anyone to sweep the election. And of course, Lok Sabha elections are different from Vidhant Sabha assembly elections and even if there is a swing away from the BJP and the BJP drops 7-8% in terms of vote share even then it will sweep Uttar Pradesh and that is what the exit polls are also showing. However, there is one interesting thing to look at which is is there another poll developing in Uttar Pradesh? On the one side, there is the BJP which got more than 40% votes in 2017 and more than 51% votes in 2019. That is one poll, one part of Uttar Pradesh's vote, the political system, the electoral system. On the other side, there was a kind of fragmentation of the non-BJP vote between two powerful regional parties. The Samajwadi party largely seen as a Yadav dominated party and the BSP largely seen as a Jadav dominated party. Jadav a sub community or a subcast or a caste within what we broadly called Dalits or schedule caste. This is where the two parties got divided and together they would get about 50 to 50% of the total votes and when they were very dominant and now they've dropped to around 40, 39-40% in the last few elections. But let's look at what is likely to happen. The exit poll suggests that the Samajwadi party and the Rashtriya Lokthala alliance and its alliance with some smaller parties is actually surging ahead of the BSP and if that happens, if the gap opens up then this could well be a semifinal for the Samajwadi party to be able to take on and pose a challenge to the BJP in future elections. This is why. Let's just look at the composition of UP's electorate and I'm just going to first look at the caste composition because often class voting, lot of voting actually coalesces around the caste composition itself and I'm looking at broad caste composition. This suggests there are no clear figures that OBCs make up about 41% of Uttar Pradesh's electorate and out of that 41% and remember I'm only talking percentage points here, 11-12% are Yadavs and then there are Kormis and Kauris who are numerically large and then there are other non-Yadav OBCs. During Mulaim Singh Yadav's reign increasingly the Samajwadi party was seen as a Yadav party and not just an OBC party and over the years what has happened especially since 2014 more so in 2019 than even 2014 the non-Yadav OBC groups have gravitated towards the BJP. When you look at the BSP since 2007 the BSP has increasingly been seen as a Jatav party. OBCs are the dominant group within the overall Dalit serial caste population of Uttar Pradesh and they alone in the 2011 census as it suggests make up more than half of Dalits in Uttar Pradesh which is approximately if you look at it about 11% of the total, 11-12% of the total population of Uttar Pradesh. Now what does that mean? That means that the BSP and the SP have a very strong foundation both in about 11-12% of UP. Now there is Muslims who are unlikely to vote for the BJP. They account for approximately 20% of Uttar Pradesh. They have been historically divided and split between the BSP Congress and the SP and they tend to vote for who they think are likely to be the strong candidate against the BJP in any region. The question is will Maya Vati or the Congress for that matter be able to hold on any part of that Muslim vote or is that Muslim vote going to completely coalesce behind the Samajwadi party-led alliance and if that happens then what we will see is that a significant chunk of the UP's vote base will completely align behind Samajwadi party which used to be split between several parties. Then let's look at the non-Yadav OBCs. In this particular phase of Akhilesh Yadav out of power for now 5 years and after several defeats in various elections Akhilesh Yadav has tried to increasingly present the Samajwadi party as not a Yadav party. He has brought in non-Yadav OBC leaders who had aligned themselves first with BSP then with BJP. He's brought them into the party. He's given many of them tickets and there is a sense that there could be a shift of the BJP's non-Yadav OBC vote towards Samajwadi party and again if that happens that's a significant chunk remember it is about the non-Yadav OBC vote in Uttar Pradesh is about 30%. So even if you can take one third of that that is 10 percentage points. So there is a high likelihood when you add up all these numbers that the Samajwadi party and RLD and other smaller parties alliance could find a consolidation of the Yadav vote, the Muslim vote, a significant chunk of the non-Yadav OBC vote and also the floating vote young people who are unhappy with the fact that there is unemployment. Those are unhappy with the way in which the state managed COVID. Those are unhappy with the local BJP candidate who might have won and are not convinced that just replacing that candidate is a good enough reason. They might switch. So there is a chance that you will see that the gap between the BJP and the Samajwadi party which now in 2019 was 30% and more could reduce to about 10-12%. That is puts the Samajwadi with party within striking distance of the BJP in any future election. Right now it needs a massive swing. Over a gap of 30 odd percent it needs a massive massive swing to move ahead of the BJP and that all that vote share has to come from the BJP to the Samajwadi party alliance. But if it can actually go within 10% striking distance of the BJP or even less then there is a chance that in future elections it can increase its position and Akhilesh Yadav is relatively young. He still has time to cobble up various alliances. Cast alliances on the ground between upper caste who have traditionally supported the BJP and non-Jatav Dalits and non-Yadav OBCs will have to be cemented over a period of time. Cast conflicts can arise and those things can break up over a period of time. The question is whether they will switch towards what they think is likely or potentially a winning party or a winning combination and that could mean that this election could well turn out to be a semi-final for the Samajwadi party where it can literally very strongly challenge the BJP not only in the next assembly elections but in 2024 as well. That's the show today. Keep watching NewsClick, subscribe to us and like this video, share it as well.