NDA To Fall Short Of Majority in 2019 Elections: Survey

New Delhi: The NDA led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi might fall short of achieving the majority in lok Sabha polls but will emerge as the single largest party with 233 seats, a nation-wide survey has predicted.

1. In Odisha, NDA will win 12 seats and others in 9 seats, the ABP-CVoter survey said. It, however, did not elaborate who the others are.

2. In all, the survey covered 543 Lok Sabha constituencies and 22,309 voters.

3. It said BJP alone is expected to bag 203 seats, while the Congress alone will bag 109. The Third Front parties are poised to be kingmakers with a combined tally of over 130 seats.

The highlights of the survey are as follows:

4. NDA is expected to win in 233 seats, UPA in 167 and others in 143.

5. Parties that were present at Mamata Banerjee’s Kolkata rally, which include the Congress in addition to the Left parties, are predicted to get 257 seats.

6. At 25%, anger against the Centre is at its highest in the past five years.

7. The Citizenship Bill has harmed the BJP in the Northeast

8. The SP-BSP-RLD alliance is predicted to have a clean victory in Uttar Pradesh with 51 seats out of 80.

9. In Bihar, NDA could win 35 seats and UPA five seats.

10. While the NDA is expected to be at an advantage in Odisha over Naveen Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal, Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress is expected to sweep West Bengal, it said.

(Opinion polls have, however, gone way off the mark in forecasting the result outcome, given the sheer number of voters in the country).

“In a nutshell,” the survey said “a popular prime minister (Modi) is facing stiff challenge from a united opposition. Also, his popularity is facing headwinds due to depressed economic sentiment. A combination of the two may lead to domino effects of driving away the fence sitters and rallying the faithful of opposition,” it said.