New Delhi, (Samajweekly) The final round of an exclusive opinion poll on the Karnataka Assembly elections conducted across the state conducted by C-Voter for ABP News reveals that Prime Minister Narendra Modi retains his charisma and popularity among the voters of the southern state.
While the poll still puts the Congress in the pole position, hectic and energetic campaigning by Modi during the last leg of vote seeking has improved the fortunes of the BJP.
In the opinion polls for the Assembly elections conducted during March and April, the BJP appeared quite far behind the Congress, both in terms of vote share and number of seats. But an intense last leg of campaigning by the Prime Minister has now ensured that the projected vote share of the BJP doesn’t drop below 36 per cent, the same it had garnered in the 2018 Assembly elections.
Even BJP’s projected seat tally is now better than the numbers thrown up in March and April. In fact, in the Greater Bengaluru region, which elects 32 MLAs, the improvement is dramatic. From trailing behind the Congress earlier, the BJP seems to have turned the tables somewhat and is now projected to inch ahead of its rival in the projected seat tally.
While this last-minute effort by Modi may not be enough to help the BJP retain the state (Karnataka has a long history of changing governments), it augurs well for the party ahead of next year’s Lok Sabha elections.
In the 2018 Assembly elections, while the BJP emerged as the single largest party with 104 seats, it was nine short of a simple majority and a post-poll arrangement between the Congress and the JD(S) saw them form the government.
In the Lok Sabha elections a year after that, the BJP and candidates won 26 of the 28 seats in the state. A similar pattern was seen in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan about five years ago. The BJP lost the Assembly elections in all the three states in 2018, but swept all three in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
The 224-member Karnataka Assembly will go to the polls on May 10, and the results will be declared on May 13.
