BJP will fall short of majority in 2019 Lok Sabha elections, will slip in Hindi belt: Times Now opinion poll

Parties other than BJP and Congress will see their fortunes rise, the survey predicted.

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi may face a slightly harder time in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections than he did last time, an opinion poll has claimed. The poll has predicted that the BJP would win 227 seats, down from its 2014 tally of 282; and the Congress would raise its strength to 78, from its all-time low of 44.

The opinion poll, results of which were broadcast on Times Now on Tuesday evening, suggested that the BJP would fall short of the halfway mark thanks mainly to reverses it would suffer in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The two states had given the saffron party 93 of its 282 seats in 2014. But the opinion poll saw it winning 64 seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

The survey was conducted by WarRoom Strategies and Utopia, and polled close to 13000 respondents in 156 constituencies.

The Narendra Modi-led BJP had won 282 seats on its own, with its NDA allies bringing in another 54 seats. The Congress-led UPA sank to just 60 seats, with the Grand Old Party scraping a low of 44 seats.

The opinion poll however, forecast only the BJP and Congress, bunching all their allies and other standalone parties under 'Others'. The other parties are predicted to win 238 seats in 2019, 21 more than their 2014 tally of 217.

The 2019 Lok Sabha elections promise plenty of drama. Leaders from across the spectrum of opposition parties have been working for months now to find common ground and form an anti-BJP political front. The efforts are yet to coalesce into a coherent unified opposition platform, with leaders like TRS's K Chandrasekhar Rao and TMC's Mamata Banerjee indicating their preference for a non-BJP and non-Congress front.

If the BJP does lose some seats, like the opinion poll predicts, it will only hope that 'almost allies' like the post-Jayalalithaa AIADMK perform well enough to willingly join hands after the election.