BJP under Manohar Lal Khattar is likely to win a second term in Haryana according to the ABP-CVoter opinion poll. The survey predicts the BJP will win 83 seats in the 90-member Assembly. It won 47 seats in 2014.
The Congress could be reduced to just three seats in the Assembly, down 12 from its 2014 tally of 15.
According to the survey, two out of these three seats are in the Ahirwal region, which includes Muslim-dominated Mewat while one seat is in the Jat-dominated area around Rohtak and Sonepat.
In terms of vote share, the survey predicts that the BJP could get 47.5 percent of the votes, well ahead of the Congress at 21.4 percent and JJP at 9.3 percent.
The survey was conducted over the last four weeks and over 10,000 people were interviewed across all the Assembly constituencies in Haryana.
This resounding projection in favour of the BJP is despite the fact that according to the survey, over half the respondents wanted to vote out the BJP. The CVoter survey says that 57.5 percent respondents in Haryana said they want to change the state government immediately, 52.8 percent said they want to change the chief minister and 64 percent said they want to change their local MLA.
This could be due to a number of reasons.
First, the Opposition doesn’t seem have an effective face in the state. According to the survey, 40.3 percent respondents said that Manohar Lal Khattar is the best CM candidate in the state, well ahead of Congress’ Bhupinder Singh Hooda and JJP’s Dushyant Chautala.
Another aspect is that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is by far the most popular prime ministerial face at 71.6 percent. Rahul Gandhi is an extremely distant second at 7.6 percent.
While there clearly is anti-incumbency in Haryana, it appears that the Opposition hasn’t been able to capitalise on it and present solutions to the problems people are facing. When asked which party can solve their problems, 29.1 percent said BJP and 17.8 percent said Congress.
According to the survey 28 percent people in Haryana said employment and business are the most important issues for them while 12.4 percent rated water supply as the main issue.
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