By IANS,
New Delhi : A pre-election survey conducted by the STAR News and A.C. Nielsen has predicted that Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit will form the next government in Delhi for the third successive term with the ruling Congress winning 39 of the total 70 assembly seats.
The survey, whose results were announced Wednesday evening, said the main opposition, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is expected to bag 27 seats with 37 percent vote share.
The Congress share has been predicted to be 43.5 percent. The pollsters said the Bahujan Samaj Party and others, including Independents, will garner more than 18 percent votes but will get only three seats.
In this second and final round of the survey, the pollsters spoke to 6,274 voters in 31 assembly constituencies in Delhi between Nov 15 and 20 and asked the same questions they had asked in the first survey. The answers, however, were different.
The first round of the survey was conducted between Oct 27 and Nov 1 when the major parties were yet to declare their candidates.
The findings of the final survey indicated that the Congress would lose 4.3 per cent vote share compared to its performance in the 2003 polls while the BJP would gain 2.7 percent more votes. The first survey had shown that the Congress would lose 6.1 per cent and the BJP would gain by 4.2 percent.
Polling in DElhi is slated for Nov 29 for 69 of the total 70 seats. The election to the Rajendra Nagar seat was deferred after BJP candidate Puranchand Yogi here allegedly committed suicide.
The latest survey claimed the voters would base their choices on issues of inflation, law and order situation, employment, terrorism and justice for the poor.
The respondents felt that corruption, poverty and water-shortage had assumed serious proportions.
But 46 percent of those surveyed rated the Sheila Dikshit government’s performance as good or very good, 16 percent called it bad. As any as 50 percent were convinced that quality of life has improved in Delhi over the last five years whereas 13 per cent said it had deteriorated.
The performance of Shiela Dikshit as the chief minister was rated good or very good by 48 percent of the voters, while 16 percent said they were not happy. Compared to the first survey, the number of voters rating the Dikshit government’s performance bad has reduced by 4 per cent.
Around 38 percent termed the BJP’s performance as an opposition party good or excellent. This is an improvement of 7 percentage in favour of the BJP as compared to the previous round of the survey.
As many as 43 percent of voters told the surveyors that Dikshit will make a better chief minister than the BJP’s Vijay Kumar Malhotra, whom only 16 percent favoured. During the first survey, 37 percent had voted for Dikshit.
Again, 57 percent voters considered the Congress chief minister’s image better, while 20 percent pitched for Malhotra and 15 for BJP leader Madal Lal Khurana.
Even in the party’s image category, 49 percent favoured the Congress, 34 for the BJP, 8 for the BSP, and 5 percent voted the Nationalist Congress Party.