The Bharatiya Janata Party won power in Uttar Pradesh in a landslide, defeating the Samajwadi Party.

It won 312 of the 403 seats on offer.

That left it 110 seats clear of a majority.

The BJP took 77.4% of the seats on 39.7% of the vote.

The SP fell to 47 seats on 21.8% of the vote.

The Supreme Court ruled that seeking votes in the name of religion, caste or language was a corrupt electoral practice. Days later, the Election Commission set a seven-phase schedule for Uttar Pradesh, polling from 11 February to 8 March.¹²

A Samajwadi Party convention displaced Mulayam Singh Yadav as party president for his son Akhilesh Yadav. The Election Commission then ruled Akhilesh Yadav's faction was the true Samajwadi Party and gave it the party's bicycle symbol.³

The Samajwadi Party and the Indian National Congress struck a pre-poll alliance — parties teaming up for the election — after Congress president Sonia Gandhi intervened in stalled talks, with Akhilesh Yadav's party taking 298 of the state's 403 seats and Congress 105.⁴

After the first phase of voting, Dainik Jagran published a banned exit poll. The Election Commission ordered criminal cases in 15 districts, and police arrested the outlet's online editor, Shekhar Tripathi. Days later, at a Fatehpur rally, Narendra Modi said graveyards and cremation grounds should be treated alike, as should Ramzan and Diwali power supply.⁵⁶

SP suffered a collapse.

BJP itself grew from 47 seats to 312 seats this time.

The single biggest movement ran from SP to BJP, covering 162 of the 319 seats that changed hands.

Turnout, the share of registered voters who actually cast a ballot, rose +1.7 pp from the previous election — the highest the state has recorded.

The closest race was at Domariaganj, Uttar Pradesh, decided by a margin — how far ahead the winner finished, in votes, over whoever came second — of 171 votes.

Kunda, Uttar Pradesh saw the widest margin of the election, with the winner ahead by 51.6% of the vote.

Nakur, Uttar Pradesh recorded the highest turnout of any seat, 77.5%, and also drew the most candidates, 26.

Sahibabad, Uttar Pradesh was the largest constituency by registered voters, with 8,65,650 on its rolls.

NOTA — None of the Above, a ballot option letting voters formally reject every candidate on offer — drew 7,57,643 votes statewide, 0.9% of the total.

Mulayam Singh Yadav founded the Samajwadi Party in Lucknow on 4 October 1992, after splitting from the Janata Dal, and the party went on to contest every subsequent Uttar Pradesh assembly election.⁷

Uttar Pradesh's own assembly later shrank from 425 seats to 403 after the state of Uttarakhand was carved out of its northern hill districts in 2000.⁸

The last time a single party had won a majority on its own was 2007, when the Bahujan Samaj Party led by Mayawati took 206 of the state's 403 seats.⁹