Delhi: The ruling Samajwadi Party has a slight edge in the high-stakes Uttar Pradesh 2017 Assembly elections, marginally ahead of the BJP, as per an opinion poll.
On the other hand, the Congress is nowhere on the radar of the voters.
Following are some of the key findings of the ABP News-Lokniti, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) poll:
- 30 percent of the voters surveyed from July 23rd through August 7th said they would vote for the SP if elections were held right now.
- BJP along with its two small allies, Apna Dal (Anupriya Patel faction) and Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party, is the choice of 27 percent of the voters.
- It is followed by the BSP at 26 percent.
- The Congress party is nowhere in the race currently with a mere 5 percent voters opting for it.
- SP is likely to win between 141-151 seats in the 403-member Assembly.
- BJP is likely to fetch 124-134 seats, BSP 103-113, Congress 8-14 and Others in the fray 6-12.
- Compared to 2012 polls, the BJP is the biggest gainer in terms of votes with an 11 percentage point swing towards it.
- But compared with the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, BJP is down by 16 points.
- SP is doing much better among Yadav and Muslim communities with the 68 percent of the former and 62 percent of the latter indicating support for at present.
- BJP is drawing most of its support from upper castes and lower OBCs.
- BJP is ahead of others in the Western and Eastern parts of UP.
- Samajwadi Party is doing well in the Awadh and Rohilkhand regions.
- SP is doing much better in rural areas (78 percent of Uttar Pradesh is rural) than in urban parts of UP.
- While 32 percent of rural respondents expressed their support for the ruling party, only 24 percent of urban voters did the same.
- BSP is getting greater support in towns and cities (29 percent) than in villages (25 percent).
- Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati were the preference of 24 percent voters each (in response to an open ended question that provided no specific names).
- 4 percent of the respondents said they wanted to see SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav as CM and 2 percent took his cousin Ram Gopal Yadav’s name for the top job.
- For BJP, Rajnath Singh was CM choice of 7 percent respondents, Adityanath of 5 percent, Varun Gandhi of 3 percent and PM Narendra Modi of 2 percent.
- 68 percent of the voters expressed their satisfaction (full and somewhat) with PM Modi's work.
- Satisfaction with the NDA government is quite high at 63 percent.
- 52 percent were of the opinion that PM Modi has failed to keep his electoral promise of ushering in achhe din (good days).
- As per the survey, price rise is the second most important issue for the electorate of UP (18 percent) after development (33 percent) at this juncture. More voters blame PM Modi’s government (29 percent) for it than they blame Akhilesh Yadav’s (12 percent).
- 61 percent of the voters expressed satisfaction with Akhilesh Yadav's performance as CM over the last four years and 60 percent were satisfied with the work done by the government he leads.
- On governance, 29 percent of the respondents said BSP, 25 percent chose BJP and 24 opted for SP.
- On the issue of maintaining law and order, 34 percent chose BSP as opposed to 23 and 21 percent who said BJP and SP respectively.
- When asked to choose between the present SP government and the previous BSP government on the basis of performance, a slightly greater proportion chose Mayawati’s rule to Akhilesh Yadav’s rule, 34:31.
- On Sheila Dikshit as Congress' CM candidate, 17 percent said it did not make a difference to them and another 40 percent did not express any opinion.
(The survey was conducted in the immediate aftermath of the Una flogging incident and the Dayashankar Singh controversy).
