Chief Minister’s rating: Naveen Patnaik Leads

In the last Chief Minister’s ratings reported in January by India Today, the Top Chief Minister in the country was UP CM Yogi Adityanath. The India Today Survey is correct because it represents the national opinion. However, it is wrong because, States with large population will get overstated in the survey. Let me re-calculate the Chief Minister’s ratings correcting for the State’s voting population (2019 Lok Sabha)

Arvind Kejriwal: 7.5

Naveen Patnaik: 1.53

Nitish Kumar: 1.49

Yogi Adityanath: 1.3

Mamata: 1.2

In re-stated ratings, Arvind Kejriwal followed by Naveen goes to the top while Yogi Adityanath and Mamata Banerjee are not differentiated by much.

The Crowd’s Opinion is not a large sample survey like the one carried out by India Today. Neither is it the opinion of experts like Commentators, analysts or journalists. It is the view of Crowd (People passionate in Politics from all walks of life) who have been given limited resources to allocate over a set of Chief Ministers

The Crowd’s ranking is as follows, Just the top 5 and bottom 5

We have no idea what the Crowd’s opinion of the CMs was in January but if we hazard a trend, it is clear who are the biggest winners and losers in these Coronavirus Times

Big winners – Naveen Patnaik, KCR

Big Losers – Nitish Kumar, Arvind Kejriwal
Coming to Chart topper Naveen Patnaik. In January, Naveen was in the Top 5 in the India Today Survey. In the re-stated ratings he was number 2. His ‘rise’ further may have to do with Odisha responded fairly early and quite aggressively to the COVID-19 pandemic. The state launched district-wise lockdowns around the 17th and then extended it across all districts by 24th. On a per capita basis, the State reports one of the lowest COVID-19 numbers across the country.

Arvind Kejriwal was leaps and bounds ahead of the others in January (adjusted figures). That was also partly because of the election campaign at that time. However with the campaign completed and the unseemly sight of migrants from Delhi milling in the thousands in the bus stops has had some negative impact on Kejriwal.

KCR is an unusual mix given his demeanour. After the encounter killings in December last year, KCR picked up momentum. He reinforced that image with intense lathi charge to those violating the lockdown. On the other hand, when migrants panicked in Hyderabad, he made an impassionate and empathetic speech requesting them not to panic as they were family members. A contrast to Naveen particularly as Telangana has very large number of cases (ranked 6th).

What about Yogi?

Yogi Adityanath is a no-nonsense CM from UP and extremely popular with some BJP supporters. But as the India Today survey shows that even with the sample likely to have 45% NDA supporters, Yogi Adityanath fails to win more than 40% of the votes of NDA supporters (It could be even lesser). It is not that he is doing poorly according to the Crowd but it probably a few notches below the top 3.

What About Vijayan?

Many asked, what about Vijayan? If one moves away from Twitter and away from the propaganda. It is clear that Kerala is appearing to be struggling and not doing really well when it comes to COVID-19. Inspite of being a small State, it leads the ranks of most COVID-19 cases. This is inspite of the fact that it is not the State with the highest inbound foreign travellers. While Population density is huge, the district with one of the lowest population density has the most cases.

The Crowd’s wisdom is quite different from a survey. When surveys are adjusted for population, the Crowd produces similar results with some changes which may be owing to time periods. This is a continuous data collection process, so please feel free to visit our web-site the Chief Minister’s ratings link anytime