A study conducted by Loyola College’s former professor S. Rajanayagam, director of People Studies, has predicted that the DMK will have a definite edge in the Assembly elections.
Briefing journalists here on Friday, Mr. Rajanayagam said he had commissioned a pre-poll survey with a sample size of 8,064 respondents spread across 177 of the 234 Assembly constituencies. The responses indicated that the DMK would garner 42.7 per cent of the total votes, while the ruling AIADMK’s vote share is likely to be 36.6 per cent.
“In January, the third front had still not taken shape in a concrete manner. During that stage, the DMK was ahead by just two percentage points. Now, the difference has tripled with the DMDK front’s vote share reducing to 7.9 per cent,” claimed Mr Rajanayagam. When asked an open ended question about who they would like as their next chief minister, 41.1 per cent of respondents chose DMK chief M. Karunanidhi, while 31.7 per cent chose AIADMK chief Jayalalithaa.
DMDK president and actor Vijayakant came third with 10.1 percent votes while PMK leader Anbumani stood fourth with 6 per cent votes. Surprisingly, two per cent of respondents said they would like Naam Tamilar Katchi’s Seeman to be their chief minister.
Party affiliation, the manifesto and performance in previous government were the three major factors based on which the respondents said they made their choices.
Mr. Rajanayagam claimed that the AIADMK’s vote share has reduced from 43 per cent in November 2014 to 31.8 per cent in May 2016 while DMK’s vote share has increased from 26 per cent to 40.7 per cent in the same period.
Junior Vikatan survey
Another pre-poll survey undertaken by the Tamil magazine Junior Vikatan and published on Friday, predicted that candidates of the DMK-led alliance would win in 77 constituencies, while the AIADMK front candidates would emerge victorious in 73 constituencies and one candidate of the PMK would win.
However, it said, the remaining 83 constituencies would witness a close contest making it difficult to predict the winner.
The survey said individually, the AIADMK would fare better than the DMK winning 73 seats as against the latter’s 64 seats.
The DMK’s allies Congress would bag 10 seats and Puthiya Tamilagam, IUML and MMK would win one seat each.
