BJP alliance to sweep Puducherry assembly polls: Asianet-C fore pre-poll survey

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-All India Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK)-All India NR Congress (AINRC) coalition will be victorious in the upcoming Puducherry assembly elections, a pre-poll survey conducted by Asianet News Network-C fore has projected.

The survey, conducted from March 5-12 in the poll-bound Union territory, has projected that the BJP-AIADMK-AINRC alliance would win 23-27 seats in the 33-member legislative assembly with a vote share of 52%. 30 members are elected directly by the voters, while three are nominated by the central government, which means that 16 is the majority figure in the House.

The Congress-Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) coalition, meanwhile, would win three-seven seats with a vote share of 36%, the survey projected further. The alliance was victorious in the previous assembly elections, in 2016, with V Narayanasamy of the Congress becoming the chief minister. However, the government collapsed last month as several Congress lawmakers, including ministers, resigned, with some defecting to the BJP. The Union territory is currently under President’s rule.

Others, the survey said, would bag a maximum of a single seat, with 12% vote share.

For this pre-poll survey, Asianet News Network-C fore used systematic random sampling methodology, interviewing 5,077 voters across all 30 constituencies. The interviewees were spread across 223 urban and 113 rural locations. The survey was conducted using a special software developed by C fore and has a margin error of 2 percentage points at 95% confidence level.

Puducherry will vote in a single phase on April 6, along with the neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu, which has 234 assembly constituencies. Three other states will also go to polls around the same time-Kerala, Assam and West Bengal.

Counting of votes and declaration of results for Puducherry, as in the case of the four states, will take place on May 2.