A divided assembly
What happened
This election produced a hung house in Uttar Pradesh — a result where no single party wins enough seats to govern alone.
The Janata Dal won the most seats, 208 of 425 on offer.
That left it short of the 213-seat majority mark.
Its nearest rival, the Indian National Congress, won 94 seats.
What changed
The party that topped this election's seat count had not contested Uttar Pradesh's previous election at all.
It went from 0 seats to 208, enough to lead the new assembly without controlling it outright.
132 constituencies that had gone to the INC last time went to the JD this time — the single biggest shift in the state.
Notable numbers
A few numbers from this election are worth knowing on their own.
Bareilly Cantonment, Uttar Pradesh was the closest result of the election, decided by a margin of just 21 votes — how far ahead the winner finished, in votes, over whoever came second.
Chhaprauli, Uttar Pradesh saw the most one-sided result of the election, with the winner ahead by 73.2% of the vote — and the same constituency also posted the election's highest turnout — the share of registered voters who actually cast a ballot — at 77.8%.
Govind Nagar, Uttar Pradesh was the largest constituency by registered voters, with 3,42,419 electors on its rolls.
Sikandrabad, Uttar Pradesh drew the largest field of the election, with 41 candidates on the ballot.
The backdrop
No single party had yet repeated as Uttar Pradesh's leading force since the Emergency ended.
Held in June 1977, shortly after the national Emergency ended, this assembly election saw the newly formed Janata Party win 352 of Uttar Pradesh's 425 seats. The Indian National Congress, which had won every UP assembly election since the state's first in 1951, fell to 47 seats and lost power for the first time since independence.