This significant decline in the BJP’s share of the vote in the region has been primarily due to its sudden and precipitous fall in the all important state of Uttar Pradesh where the party has lost about 8 percentage points in popularity since the beginning of this year.
The SP-BSP alliance which came into being two months ago is currently comfortably ahead of the BJP in terms of the electorate’s voting preference. In Rajasthan, the other big state of the region, even as the BJP maintains an overall edge over the Congress, the latter has made substantial gains compared to the January survey.
Moreover, at the assembly level, it is the Congress which leads the BJP.
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