Arvind Kejriwal preferred choice of voters for Delhi CM's post: Zee-Taleem Poll Survey

New Delhi: With Delhi scheduled to vote on 07 February to choose a new government, the election fever in the nation capital is increasing. To assess the mood of the people of Delhi, Zee News commissioned a survey through TALEEM Research Foundation. The aim was also to identify factors that might influence voters’ decision in the 2015 Assembly Elections.

As per the survey, three out of 10 or 31.7 percent voters unanimously indicated their choice for Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Arvind Kejriwal for the CM post. On the other hand, as far as BJP is concerned, the most frequently mentioned name is that of Dr Harsh Vardhan (11.3 percent), Kiran Bedi (5.0 percent), Narendra Modi (4.8 percent) followed by a whole host of names who have been chosen by less than 2.0 percent voters namely Smriti Irani, Satish Upadhyay, Manoj Kumar, Vijay Goyel, Sushma Swaraj and other host of name have been mentioned.

Similarly, in Congress ,Sheela Dixit is the only leader who has been chosen by 4.4 percent voters, while remaining are less than 2.0 percent. Almost one third voters are not sure about their choice of Chief Minister.

Interestingly, higher percent of female voters, largely housewives expressed their desire to vote for AAP (37.6 percent), whereas the male voters preferred the BJP (45.5 percent).

It may be mentioned that for every 1000 male voters there are 802 female voters in Delhi Vidhan Sabha Elections 2015 which was 805 in Delhi Vidhan Sabha Elections 2013, showing continued skewed sex ratio among voters. It is this reason that BJP is ahead of AAP in spite of AAP being favoured by female voters.

Female voters think of Kejriwal as a young looking, simple and honest family leader who would take care of their burning problems of price rise (84.3 percent), corruption (69.9 percent) problem of better road, regular electricity supply and drinking water (70.8 percent). They also believe that Kejriwal will provide security to women in Delhi. It seems female voters who do not feel safe (83.9 percent) in Delhi has favoured Kejriwal who could make Delhi safe for female voters.

As for the survey methodology, from among 70 Delhi Vidhan Sabha constituency equally divided in seven Lok Sabha constituencies, five Vidhan Sabha Constituencies were selected, totalling 35 Vidhan Sabha constituency using systematic random sampling method. Within each Vidhan Sabha constituency, six polling booths were randomly selected using available latest list of polling booths.

In each polling booth, 20 voters were randomly selected using a sampling interval. In this way, 4200 voters were selected for opinion poll survey. During the data collection 4196 voters were interviewed in which 36.8 percent replacement was necessary from the list of original selected voters due to several reasons including non-availability.

A ‘close ended interview schedule’ was prepared in which questions suggested by Zee News were also incorporated. The interview schedule was prepared in Hindi and pre-tested before finalization.

Opinion poll survey was carried out from January 10-16, 2015.

The survey was telecast on 'Delhi Ka Mood' show on Zee News.

During the Opinion Poll Survey a major political event that took place relates to joining of former cop and social activist Kiran Bedi and Shazia Ilmi, with few others in the BJP. This has added a new twist and colour to ongoing process of Delhi polls. Some of the BJP leaders have even hinted that Bedi could be future CM and the same has been highlighted by media to provide a strong and stable government which will be fully supported by Central government (read Prime Minister, Narendra Modi). While no direct impact of these political events could be discern in this phase of opinion survey, its effects could be seen in the second phase of opinion survey and in final election results.