A hung house
What happened
This election produced a hung house in Uttar Pradesh — a result where no single party wins enough seats to govern alone.
The Bharatiya Janata Party won the most seats, 177 of 422 on offer.
That left it short of the 212-seat majority mark.
The Samajwadi Party finished second with 109 seats.
What changed
The clearest movement in this election was seats shifting away from the party that had led the outgoing assembly.
48 constituencies that had gone to the BJP last time went to the SP this time — the single biggest shift in the state.
The BJP has now topped Uttar Pradesh's seat count in 2 elections in a row.
Notable numbers
A few numbers from this election are worth knowing on their own.
Pharenda, Uttar Pradesh was the closest result of the election, decided by a margin of just 50 votes — how far ahead the winner finished, in votes, over whoever came second.
Kunda, Uttar Pradesh saw the widest margin of the election, with the winner ahead by 52.3% of the vote.
Turnout — the share of registered voters who actually cast a ballot — peaked in Thakurdwara, Uttar Pradesh, at 73.4%.
Govind Nagar, Uttar Pradesh was the largest constituency by registered voters, with 3,63,340 electors on its rolls.
The backdrop
Beyond the top two parties, the assembly seated a wide range of smaller players.
10 parties won at least one seat, and independents added 8 more.
The election's runner-up party had only recently been founded, splitting away from an existing party.
Mulayam Singh Yadav founded the Samajwadi Party in Lucknow on 4 October 1992, together with fellow socialist leader Beni Prasad Verma, after splitting from the Janata Dal. The party positioned itself in the tradition of socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia and went on to contest every subsequent Uttar Pradesh assembly election.