BJP Leads But AAP and Kejriwal Surging in Delhi: Survey

Delhi’s political mood is swinging rapidly, according to a recent survey conducted by Cicero Associates, a Delhi based public opinion and political consultancy firmin the last week of August.

If elections were held at the time of the survey, the Aam Aadmi Party would have 27 per cent vote share, the Congress, 26 per cent vote share and the BJP, 31 per cent vote share.

At the same time the survey shows as many as 47 per cent of Delhiites as willing to give Aam Aadmi Party a chance to form the government, as against only 33 per cent for the BJP, and 27 per cent for the Congress.

Arvind Kejriwal is way ahead of Sheila Dikshit and Vijay Goel in Chief Ministerial popularity ranking and the poll predicts that while the BJP and the Congress have reached their saturation point in converting their support into votes, Aam Aadmi Party has a large head room for further growth.

The survey showed that as many as 14 per cent voters of Delhi did not recognize the name of Aam Aadmi Party. One-third could not identify the party’s recently acquired symbol – the broom. Therefore, it is clear that the Aam Aadmi Party has converted only a little over half of its potential support of 47 per cent into votes so far.

Since the last such survey conducted in February, the Congress has lost 9 percentage points; BJP has lost 4 percentage points; while AAP has registered a significant swing of 13 percentage points in its favor.

When asked if the Aam Aadmi Party should get a chance to form the government, as many as 47 per cent respondents were favorable to the idea versus 31 per cent who were against it. For the current Congress government, only 37 percent were in favor while as many as 62 percent respondents were against it.  In the case of BJP too the proportion who wanted to give it a chance (33 percent) were outnumbered by those who were against it (52 percent).

For the post of chief minister, when given a choice between Arvind Kejriwal, Shiela Dikshit and Vijay Goel, 41 percent named Arvind Kejriwal, followed by 20 percent for Shiela Dikshit and 14 percent for Vijay Goel.  

A total of 3310 respondents were interviewed in the first wave, while 3325 were interviewed in the second wave.  The respondents were scientifically selected from the electoral rolls of 175 polling booths spread across 35 Assembly Constituencies.