A single party, on its own, wins outright
What happened
One party won enough seats to govern entirely on its own, without needing any coalition partner.
Bahujan Samaj Party won 206 of the 403 seats on offer.
That was 4 seats more than it needed for a majority.
Its nearest rival, the Samajwadi Party, won 97 seats.
What changed
The party that won this time had far fewer seats at the previous election.
Its own seat count climbed from 98 to 206.
The single biggest shift moved seats from the SP to the BSP: 71 constituencies changed that way.
Notable numbers
A few numbers from that election stand out.
The closest race was Jalesar, Uttar Pradesh, decided by a margin — how far ahead the winner finished, in votes, over whoever came second — of just 72 votes.
At the other extreme, Kunda, Uttar Pradesh saw the winner's lead over the runner-up reach 46.8% of the vote — the widest margin of the election.
Turnout — the share of registered voters who actually cast a ballot — peaked in Muzaffarabad, Uttar Pradesh, at 71.1%.
On average, 15.1 candidates contested each seat that year.
The backdrop
This broke a run of elections in which no single party had won enough seats to govern alone.
In the 2007 Uttar Pradesh assembly election, the Bahujan Samaj Party led by Mayawati won 206 of the state's 403 seats, an outright majority. Mayawati was sworn in as chief minister on 13 May 2007, forming a government without coalition support for the first time in Uttar Pradesh since 1991, after three earlier, shorter terms as chief minister.