The Election Commission on Monday, 6 January, announced the schedule for the Delhi Assembly Elections. The voting will take place on 8 February and the results will be announced on 11 February.
If the opinion poll by CVoter is anything to go by, Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party is heading towards a landslide win.
The survey predicts that AAP could win 54 to 64 Assembly seats – a mean of 59 seats out of a total of 70. This is an over two-thirds majority and only a slight reduction from its 2015 tally of 67 seats.
The survey puts the BJP tally in a range between 3 to 13, indicating that the party might be restricted to single digits yet again, but a little more than the three seats it won in 2015.
According to CVoter, the Congress could open its account, with a predicted tally of 0 to 6 seats. In 2015, it failed to win a single seat and stood second only in a handful of constituencies.
The survey was conducted in the first week of January, with a sample size of 13,076 people spread across all 70 constituencies in Delhi.
In terms of vote share, CVoter predicts that AAP could secure 53.3 percent of the votes, almost the same as the 54 percent it secured in 2015.
Curiously, the survey predicts a 6-7 percent fall in the BJP’s vote share, from 32.2 in 2015 to 25.9 percent in 2020. If this happens, it would be the lowest vote share for the BJP in years in Delhi.
The Congress’ projected vote share is 4.8 percent according to the survey, half of what it was in 2015.
However according to CVoter, 16.2 percent voters said that they are undecided or backing other parties. The undecided voters could shift to any of the three main parties by the time voting takes place.
The Kejriwal Factor
Driving the AAP wave is the popularity of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and the inability of the BJP and Congress to project an effective face against him
According to the CVoter survey, 69.5 percent respondents said that Kejriwal is their chief ministerial choice. His closest competitor is Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan, way behind at 10.7 percent. The next in line is Congress leader Ajay Maken, at 7.1 percent.
This is crucial for the Congress. Despite resigning as the state unit chief, Maken remains the party’s most popular face in the National Capital.
The survey is bad news for Manoj Tiwari and Subhash Chopra, the respective state unit chiefs of BJP and Congress. Only 1 percent and 0.2 percent voters picked them as the CM choice.
Even within BJP, Tiwari lagged behind Harsh Vardhan and Vijay Goel. While for Congress, Chopra was way behind Maken.
On being asked if they wanted to change the chief minister, 26.6 percent respondents said “yes” and 71.2 percent respondents replied “no”, indicating that Kejriwal enjoys a massive approval rating in Delhi.
Similarly, over 55 percent respondents said they didn’t want to change the local MLA, indicating that there isn’t much anti-incumbency against AAP at the legislator level either.
Which Issues Are Most Important for Delhi’s Voters?
Since the survey was conducted in the first week of January, it does indicate that the row surrounding the Citizenship (Amendment) Act isn’t helping the BJP at all and that the polls appear to be largely focussed on Delhi issues and point towards a mandate in favour of the AAP government.
According to the survey, 56 percent respondents said that “development issues” such as infrastructure, education, healthcare, water and power were most important to them while 30.6 percent said that “economic issues” such as jobs, price rise and economic growth were the most important. Only 6.8 percent respondents chose security issues.
While 32.7 percent respondents said that AAP was the best placed to solve their problems, 17.3 percent picked the BJP and 4.8 percent chose the Congress.
However, despite the poor predictions for the BJP, the survey indicates that this may not be a verdict against the Narendra Modi government at the Centre.
Some 63.3 percent respondents said that they don’t want to change the Narendra Modi government, against 34 percent who wanted to change it immediately.
While 62.2 percent said Modi is the best prime ministerial choice for the country, followed by Kejriwal at 11.7 percent and Rahul Gandhi at 8.1 percent.
On being asked who they would vote for if Lok Sabha elections were held today, around 50 percent of the respondents voiced preference for BJP and 21 percent each for AAP and Congress.
This means that more than half AAP voters at the Assembly level prefer either the BJP or the Congress at the national level.
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