The Bharatiya Janata Party won power again in Uttar Pradesh, in a landslide result even as its own seat count fell from the previous election.

It won 255 of the 403 seats.

That left it 53 seats clear of a majority.

The BJP polled 41.3% of the vote, which still converted into 63.3% of the seats.

The Samajwadi Party finished second, with 111 seats on 32.1% of the vote.

On 19 October 2021 Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra announced 40% of its candidate tickets would go to women in Uttar Pradesh's coming election. On 23 November, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav met Rashtriya Lok Dal president Jayant Chaudhary in Lucknow, joining forces with the RLD.¹²

Ten sitting BJP MLAs, including three ministers, defected to the Samajwadi Party in January. The Election Commission then set a seven-phase schedule from 10 February to 7 March, with counting on 10 March. Five days later the National Democratic Alliance sealed its seat-sharing pact, giving the Nishad Party 16 seats and Apna Dal 17, with the BJP contesting the rest.³⁴⁵

On 8 February the BJP released its manifesto, Lok Sankalp Patra, and the Samajwadi Party released its own the same day, ahead of the first phase of polling. On 8 March a truck carrying EVMs was intercepted in Varanasi by Samajwadi Party members, and the Election Commission suspended the city's Additional District Magistrate. The next day, material turned up in garbage trucks in Bareilly, Moradabad and Sonbhadra, and the Commission suspended two more magistrates.⁶⁷⁸

The BJP held onto government, though its own seat count shrank as the SP gained ground.

Its seat total fell by -57 from the previous election, even as its vote share moved +1.6 pp.

The SP's vote share moved +10.2 pp, the sharpest shift of any major party.

The single biggest movement ran from the BJP to the SP, covering 59 of the 129 seats that changed hands statewide.

Turnout, the share of registered voters who actually cast a ballot, slipped -0.5 pp from the previous election.

Dhampur, Uttar Pradesh saw the tightest finish of the election: the winner's margin — how far ahead the winner finished, in votes, over whoever came second — was 203 votes.

Noida, Uttar Pradesh saw the widest margin of the election, with the winner finishing 52.1% of the vote ahead of the runner-up.

Nakur, Uttar Pradesh recorded the highest turnout of any seat, with 76.1% of registered voters casting a ballot.

Sahibabad, Uttar Pradesh was the largest constituency in the state by registered voters, with 10,24,210 names on its rolls.

Pratappur, Uttar Pradesh drew the most candidates anywhere in the state, 25 names on the ballot.

NOTA — 'None of the Above,' a ballot option letting voters formally reject every candidate on offer — drew 6,37,304 votes statewide, 0.7% of everything cast.

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.⁹

Uttar Pradesh's own assembly had already been reshaped once before: the state's northern hill districts were carved off to form Uttarakhand in 2000, and its seat count fell from 425 to 403 at the next election.¹⁰

The Bahujan Samaj Party, led by Mayawati, won an outright majority in 2007, and she was sworn in as chief minister that May, governing without coalition support for the first time in the state since 1991.¹¹