The State of the Nation March 2019 Wave-II opinion poll conducted by CVoter for IANS shows a marginal change in fortunes for the NDA and the UPA in seat share as compared to an earlier CVoter poll put out on March 10. However, there is a sharp increase in vote share for the NDA compared to the March 10 figures of the CVoter poll.
Seat share projections for the NDA, based on pre-poll alliances, indicates it will fall short of a House majority with 261 seats — the March 10 opinion poll said it had put this number at 264. The second survey shows that the BJP will get 241 seats on its own.
The UPA, however, could fall way behind the NDA in seat share projections. According to CVoter, it will get just 143 seats on the basis of alliances it has sewed up so far with the Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha alliance in Jharkhand, the Janata Dal (S) in Karnataka, the UDF constituents in Kerala, the Nationalist Congress Party in Maharashtra and the DMK in Tamil Nadu.
The break-up, the survey says, will be 91 seats for the Congress and 52 seats for the allies. The CVoter survey earlier this month had estimated that the Congress would get 86 seats and the pre-poll allies another 55.
The State of the Nation March 2019 Wave 2 opinion poll finalised on March 24 is based on a sample survey of 10,280 this week, and a cumulative base of 70,000 respondents since January 1 covering 543 Lok Sabha constituencies.
For both alliances, the numbers would change sharply if some post poll alliances work out. As the NDA is already well ahead of the UPA, the surge from post poll alliances would push it well clear of the majority mark of 272.
This is how the CVoter opinion poll says the numbers are like to stack up for the NDA should the post poll alliances click.
The YSR Congress Party of Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy is expected to win 10 Lok Sabha seats in Andhra Pradesh, the Mizo National Front is likely to get one seat, the Biju Janata Dal 10 seats and the Telangana Rashtra Samiti 16 seats — a total of 37 seats.
Added to the pre-poll NDA alliance, the BJP-led alliance is expected to have an overall tally of 298 seats according to the CVoter opinion.
For its part, the Congress-led UPA too would see a dramatric rise in numbers but would still be well behind the NDA in the tally.
The CVoter opinion poll lists possible UPA post-poll allies as AIUDF in Assam (one seat), the LDF alliance in Kerala (three seats), the ‘mahagathbandhan’ in Uttar Pradesh (48 seats) and the Trinamool in West Bengal (34 seats). These would give a boost of 86 seats to the UPA and raise its tally to 229 seats overall — though still not good enough to come to power and well behind the NDA even without its post poll tie-ups.
There are two further scenarios. What happens if there is an Aam Aadmi Party-Congress tie-up in Delhi and how will the seat projections change if there is no mahagathbandhan in Uttar Pradesh?
In the first case, the CVoter opinion poll says the UPA will get four seats in Delhi and the NDA the remaining three Lok Sabha seats in the national capital. If there is no ‘mahagathbandhan’ in Uttar Pradesh, the UPA would get a mere two seats, the Samajwadi Party four, the Bahujan Samaj Party two seats and the BJP was likely to get 72 seats, that is close to its tally of 73 in the 2014 elections.
However, if ‘mahagathbandhan’ works out in UP, it would get only 28 seats — the March 10 figures had put this number at 29.
So far as the vote share projections are concerned, there has been a big gain for the NDA compared to the March 10 opinion poll. In terms of vote share, the NDA is likely to get 31.1 per cent of votes against 30.9 for the UPA according to the earlier poll.
The other parties are likely to get 28 per cent. However, the pre-poll alliance scenario for the BJP-led NDA formation, according to the March 24 poll figures said would help it garner 42 per cent of the vote nationally while for the Congress-led UPA alliance the vote percentage for the pre-poll allies would be 30.4 per cent.
