A swing in Marathi and Muslim votes could prove decisive in the Mumbai North Central Lok Sabha constituency, where sitting MP Poonam Mahajan of BJP is squaring off against Congress's Priya Dutt, who had lost in the 2014 election. While Mahajan, the daughter of BJP leader late Pramod Mahajan, is banking on the work carried out by her in the past five years, Dutt, the daughter of the late Sunil Dutt, says her fight is for "saving" democracy.

As per voter demographics, the constituency is dominated by Marathi-speaking residents, followed by Muslims, north Indians, Gujaratis and Marwaris, Christians and south Indians. In the 2014 general election, Mahajan had defeated Dutt, the then sitting MP, by a margin of 1.86 lakh votes. Mahajan had polled 4,78,535 votes while Dutt was restricted to 2,91,764 votes. "It remains to be seen if votes of Dalits, Muslims and the middle class, which got divided during the Modi wave in 2014, will be transferred back to the Congress," a Congress leader said.