BJP will win if Lok Sabha elections were held today: TOI online poll

NEW DELHI: If the

Lok Sabha

elections were held today, the BJP government would cap its string of state election victories since 2014 with another resounding win, said a majority of respondents in an online survey conducted by timesofindia.com and its sister sites.

It appears the BJP's stellar performance in the various state polls, since it took office at the Centre, have proven as good an indicator as any that in the event of a snap poll, it's saffron all the way.

Consider this: Since 2014, of all the state elections that were the BJP's to lose - Punjab and West Bengal don't really count - it lost only in Bihar, to the Mahagathbandhan, and in Delhi, to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). And in Delhi, it appears AAP has lost its sheen, going by the resounding victory for the BJP in the civic polls.



In that context, it is no wonder that most - not all - of TOI online's and its sister sites' surveys' respondents said that the BJP-led NDA government would perform either 'Better than in 2014' or the 'Same as in 2014'.

Almost 84% of respondents in timesofindia.com's poll believed that if general elections were held today, the government would equal or better its 2014 Lok Sabha performance. That is, 61% of those voted believed the BJP would perform better than it did in 2014. And some 23% of respondents believed the BJP would fare the same as it did in 2014.

Even of respondents on the Bengali eisamay.com - many of whom one would expect are either Trinamool or CPM supporters - a whopping 74% believed the BJP would be re-elected if the Lok Sabha polls were held today.

The only dissenters here were tamil.samayam.com's respondents and to a lesser extent telegu.samayam.com's respondents.

Close to 44% respondents in the tamil.samayam.com survey believed the Modi government would fare worse than it did in 2014, if Lok Sabha elections were to be held today. Almost 42% of telegu.samayam.com's survey respondents believed the same.

Other than these two anomalies, a snap poll is the BJP's to win.

So what was it that swung so many respondents toward believing the BJP will score big? The surveys threw up two very interesting answers.

Modi's greatest hits

It wasn't the glory of the surgical strike on Pakistan that gave the Modi government this high approval rating, TOI online and its sister sites' surveys showed.

It was, in fact, the controversial scrapping of high-value currency notes last November that appears to have led 77% of respondents to say they rated the Modi government's performance as being 'very good' and 'good'. Also helping add sheen to this government's performance was its passage of the seemingly anodyne Goods and Services Tax (GST) Bill.

Just as it was demonstrated in the recently-concluded Assembly polls in five states, it appears the nation's citizenry was one with the Modi government when it touted demonetisation as a major step in curbing the country's black money parallel economy. And despite the fact that the groundwork for the passage of the GST Bill was laid by the previous UPA government, it was the Modi government that was seen as instrumental in making it a reality.

Demonetization got a huge thumbs up among those surveyed by navbharattimes.com, maharashtratimes.com, iamgujarat.com and vijaykarnataka.com. In these surveys, more than 50% of respondents said the note ban was the most important move by the Modi government.

The other three decisions to choose from were the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, the surgical strikes in Pakistan-Occupied-Kashmir and the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan.

Over a million readers participated in these polls.