Opinion: How Almost Everyone Failed To Read The Tea Leaves In Uttar Pradesh

Uttar Pradesh swung the national verdict, and the fact is that nobody anticipated that, let alone predict it. Nobody stuck her or his neck out and said the Congress-Samajwadi Party (SP) alliance would win more seats than the BJP. Yogendra Yadav’s phase-wise election overview and his heartfelt write-ups based on his travels through the Hindi heartland zeroed in on the many factors that resulted in the 19% swing in favour of the Congress-SP alliance in the state, which led to a 9% vote drop for the BJP and 10% for the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). Yadav was the closest anybody got to sensing the electorate earthquake that, single-handedly, prevented the BJP from getting a simple majority.