The Nitish Kumar-led NDA government in Bihar is likely to win comfortably in the Assembly elections even though voters is angry with the Chief Minister and more than half want to change the government, says a poll survey.
A chunk of Bihar is angry with Nitish Kumar and wants to change the government, but as the IANS C-Voter Bihar opinion poll shows, the TINA factor is helping the NDA as they are likely to get two-third majority. As per the survey, the NDA is projected to get 141-161 seats, UPA comprising RJD, Congress and others 64-84 seats, while others are likely to get 13-23 seats in the 243-seat Bihar Assembly.
Despite the anti-incumbency, there is a massive swing in favour of NDA at 10.7 per cent while 8.5 per cent is the swing away from UPA, presumably on the strength of the alliance with the BJP. In 2015, JDU and BJP had fought separately and JDU was part of a Mahagathbandhan of JDU, RJD, Congress and others. In 2017, Nitish joined hands with the BJP to form the NDA government.
The NDA is projected to gain 93 seats while the UPA is projected to lose 104 seats, so the entire swing from the UPA is going to the NDA. The projected vote share for NDA is 44.8 per cent, a massive lead over the 33.4 per cent vote share for UPA.
The NDA is gaining seats in all the regions of Bihar, namely East Bihar (16), Magadh-Bhojpur (41), Mithilanchal (29), North Bihar (49) and Seemanchal (16).
The sample size of the survey is 25,789 and the period of the survey is September 1 to September 25. The survey covers all 243 Assembly segments and the margin of error is +/- 3 per cent at state level and +/-5 per cent at regional level.
There is heavy duty anti incumbency as 56.7 per cent of the respondents said they are angry with the Nitish Kumar government and want to change it. A total of 29.8 per cent said they are angry but don’t want to change the government while only 13.5 per cent said they are not angry.
On the overall performance of Nitish Kumar, 45.3 per cent called the performance poor, 27.2 per cent said it was average while only 27.6 per cent said the performance has been good.
While there is anger against Nitish, he still remains the most preferred candidate for Chief Minister, again amplifying the contradiction. At 30.9 per cent, Nitish is way ahead of any competitor and the Opposition leader of RJD, Tejaswi Yadav, is almost half in the ratings at 15.4 per cent, followed by Sushil Kumar Modi of the BJP at 9.2 per cent.
While the CM’s approval ratings are not as good, Prime Minister Narendra Modi enjoys high approval ratings. As many as 48.8 per cent said that Modi’s performance had been good, 21.9 per cent said it was average while only 29.2 per cent said it was poor.
With IANS inputs