The Gujarat Assembly elections are headed for a photo finish as per the third and the final round of tracker poll conducted by Lokniti-CSDS-ABP News. It claims that both the Congress and the BJP will get 43% of the votes.
The report, released on Monday evening, also says that the BJP’s vote share has dropped by 16 percentage points in just four months. A similar survey in August pegged the party’s vote share at 59%. This was down to 43% by November last week.
More spectacular is the way the Congress, which has been in the opposition for the last 22 years, has turned its fortunes around. In August, as per the survey, the Congress had only 29% of the vote share. This has grown by 14 percentage points in the four months since, with the party now neck and neck with the BJP.
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Significantly, the popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has dipped by 18 points from 82% in August to 64% in November. And Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s popularity has risen by eight percentage points, from 40% in August to 57% in the latest survey.
The dip in the BJP’s lead can be partly attributed to anger among traders. As per the survey, in October the BJP had a lead of four points among traders; however, the latest survey shows this has been nearly reversed, with the Congress now getting 43% votes among the trading community, as opposed to the BJP at 40%.
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Women move away
Another bloc that has shifted in favour of the Congress is that of women voters. Till a month back, women were strongly backing the BJP 50% to 39% for the Congress. The latter, however, has managed to cover some ground and the gap between the two parties is just two points with 44% of the respondents now favouring the BJP against 42% for the Congress.
The survey was conducted from November 23 through November 30, 2017 among 3,655 voters in 200 locations (polling stations) spread across 50 constituencies. The State has a total of 182 constituencies.