Ahead of the Uttarakhand Assembly elections, slated to be held early next year, an opinion poll carried out by ABP-CVoter has shown that 30.6% of the population polled preferred Congress leader and former state Chief Minister Harish Rawat as their candidate for the post.
The survey was carried out throughout August and had over 15,850 participants.
Meanwhile, 22.5% of the respondents chose Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and current state CM Pushkar Singh Dhami as their CM candidate while 19.5 percent picked BJP's Anil Baluni as their preferred candidate.
The Uttarakhand Assembly polls will see parties battling for 70 seats.
Seat Projections Place BJP Ahead
The survey placed the BJP ahead of other parties in the state, with the data projecting that the party will win 46 of the seats in the state Assembly, as opposed to its current hold of 57 seats. The data further projected BJP as picking up seats in a range of 44-48.
Meanwhile, the Congress is projected to win 21 seats, up from their current hold of 11 seats, with the data projecting a range of 19-23 seats.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which is making its political debut in the state, is projected to win two seats, ranging between 0 and 4.
Further, the ABP-CVoter opinion poll projected that BJP will win 43.1% of the votes, while Congress is projected to pick up 32.6% of the votes.
Other Observations
The survey also found that 35.4 percent of the people polled said that they were very much satisfied with the Uttarakhand state government's performance, while 46.7 percent said that they were not at all satisfied with the performance.
Meanwhile, 36.4 percent said that they were very much satisfied with the performance of the chief minister, while a similar percentage of those polled (35.8 percent) said that they were not at all satisfied. It may be noted here that Pushkar Singh Dhami took oath as Uttarakhand's 11th chief minister on 4 July, replacing Tirath Singh Rawat, who resigned after just four months of taking charge as the CM.
Further, 21 percent said that they were very much satisfied with the performance of the Opposition leader in the state, 27.4 percent said that they were satisfied to some extent, while 32.3 percent said that they were not at all satisfied.
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