New Delhi: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) looks set to make a very convincing and significant debut in Gujarat that is scheduled to go to the polls in two phases on December 1 and 5, while the results will be announced on December 8
This was revealed by an exclusive CVoter-ABP Gujarat Opinion Poll to gauge popular perceptions and voting intent of adult citizens in the state with a sample size of 22,807 spread across all the 182 Assembly constituencies in Gujarat using random sampling techniques.
According to the opinion poll, AAP, which already has state governments in Delhi and Punjab, will make a grand entry in the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah by securing a vote share of 20.2 per cent in the forthcoming Assembly elections.
This is not projected to translate into too many seats for AAP, as it makes a debut in the state. Yet, the party is projected to win between 7 and 15 seats. Going by the opinion poll, it is almost certain that AAP is emerging as a formidable political and electoral force in Gujarat.
While AAP is making a dent on both the BJP and the Congress, it is the latter that seems set to suffer the maximum damage. The vote share of AAP in the 2017 elections was zero. The big jump this time will lead to the projected vote share of the BJP to fall from an actual 49.1 per cent in 2017 to 45.4 per cent this time.
But the big blow seems to be falling on the Congress whose projected vote share seems to fall from an actual 41.4 per cent in 2017 to 29.1 per cent this time.
According to the CVoter survey, 20.4 per cent of the voters would prefer any AAP candidate as Chief Minister, while Congress leader Bharat Singh Solanki is preferred by just 4.8 per cent of the voters.
Sitting Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel is the preferred choice of 33 per cent of the voters. If the projections turn out to be largely correct, AAP looks set to emerge as a national political force.
–IANS