Congress to win 13 to 18 LS seats in K’taka, maybe more, reveals Eedina survey

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: The Kannada news website Eedina predicted that Congress will bag 13 to 18 Lok Sabha seats out of 28 in the upcoming general elections.

The pre-poll survey is also open to the possibility of the Grand Old Party winning 20 seats if workers manage to communicate its ambitious 25 guarantees plan that includes yearly Rs 1 lakh direct cash transfer for a women “heads of households”.

They also forecast some 10 to 13 seats for the BJP-JD(S) combine. The website eedina.com had correctly predicted that Congress would win between 132 and 140 seats in last May’s Assembly elections.

They had also forecast 56 to 65 seats for the BJP and 19 to 25 seats for the JD(S).

Congress ended up winning 135 seats while BJP and JD(S) managed 66 and 19 seats respectively.

The sample size for their Assembly poll survey had been 41,169 persons.

The website disclosed that it polled a similar 42,674 voters this time around and did so between March 28 and April 14 after candidates for both Congress and National Democratic Alliance (NDA) had been disclosed.

The survey sees Congress increasing its vote share from 31.88 per cent in Karnataka in the 2019 general elections to 43.77 per cent.

Meanwhile, the BJP which bagged a vote share of 51.38 per cent last time may see a sharp drop of 10 per cent.

This is new for the BJP since it has been increasing its vote share in general elections in Karnataka since the 1996 Lok Sabha polls.

Congress is doing well even in seats where they had trailed by 12 to 13 per cent votes last time, the survey added.

Congress and then ally JD(S) had won a seat a piece while the BJP had romped home with 25 seats in 2019.

Siddu pips Modi in state

The exercise also found that Chief Minister Siddaramaiah was more popular than Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Karnataka with a 42.27 per cent approval rating.

Meanwhile, 40.81 per cent regarded Modi favourably. The survey also sees people in the state blaming the ruling BJP at the Centre for issues such as inflation, lack of jobs and corruption more than other parties.

However, Modi retains a “clean image” with respondents insisting that he wasn’t corrupt in his personal capacity even if his party was riddled with graft.