Aeon-CrowdWisdom360 Urban Poll: Pulwama peters out for BJP
The Aeon CrowdWisdom360 Lok Sabha election 2019 Daily Tracking Urban Opinion poll is out. The survey covers nearly 2000 respondents on a weekly basis, rolled over daily. The error is 3%, confidence at 99%. It covers 19 cities across all regions in India. While it is an urban survey, it gives us a sense of how the mood of the voters is impacted by various actions of political parties
Key Take aways from the chart above
– BJP has plateaued again after Pulwama
– BJP is significantly higher than what it was on Budget day 2019 as it took back votes from regional parties on economic issues
– Budget issues tended to hurt regional parties
– Increased Congress presence in Media hurts BJP
– Pulwama while giving a gain to BJP has had no impact on regional parties
– Congress is slightly higher than it was when Rahul Gandhi conducted press conferences around Rafale
Issue Analysis
The survey started tracking various issues and we have now covered 25% of the sample. Please expect the below findings to be volatile until we finish covering 100% of the sample (which will be in 5 days time)
What are the top issues in Urban India? Ranked by order of incidence
1. Inflation
2. National Security
3. Jobs
4. Income Growth
5. Infrastructure
6. Farmers Welfare
7. Healthcare
8. Education
9. Water
10. Corruption
Some observations
– Neither BJP nor Congress do well when a voter says Inflation is his/her number 1 issue. (This could change a bit when we have 100% sample). Inflation is ironically an issue amongst middle/lower middle class and upper income groups. This may have to do with basket of goods having lesser food and more services. It is a relatively smaller issue amongst poor households
– Not surprisingly, BJP does very well amongst those who say National security is their number 1 issue. What Pulwama has done is moved some of these voters back to BJP
– When it comes to Jobs, BJP does reasonably well but Congress and regional parties are also quite close to BJP. Important to point out that unemployment as an issue is number 1 amongst only 7% of the voters. This is lower than other surveys simply because of how we ask them. We ask them about unemployment in their household and not unemployment in general. Parties will need to articulate their strategies on this issue clearly as no party is clearly dominating this space
– When it comes to Income growth again, BJP does reasonably well but Congress does equally well while regional parties perform much better. This also explains budget impacting regional parties negatively as it influenced BJP perception on Income growth. This issue too will be severely competed in 2019
– On Infra, BJP and regional parties perform quite well while Congress performs very poorly
What issues likely to trigger defection/retention?
While it is not correct to link preferred issues to defection/retention, we want to point out to some interesting observations and eventually draw conclusions in the long run
BJP
– Amongst those who voted for BJP in 2014 and also think National Defence should be top priority, 92% are intending to vote BJP again!!
– Amongst those who voted for BJP in 2014 and also think Income Growth should be top priority, 65% are intending to vote BJP again.
– Amongst those who voted for BJP in 2014 and also think Infrastructure should be top priority, 57% are intending to vote BJP again.
– Amongst those who voted for BJP in 2014 and also think Jobs should be top priority, 39% are intending to vote BJP again.
– Amongst those who voted for BJP in 2014 and also think Inflation should be top priority, 31% are intending to vote BJP again.
Clear that Jobs and Inflation are big negative issues for BJP
Congress
– Amongst those who voted for Congress in 2014 and also think National Defence should be top priority, 84% are intending to vote Congress again
– Amongst those who voted for Congress in 2014 and also think Income growth should be top priority, 75% are intending to vote Congress again
– Amongst those who voted for Congress in 2014 and also think Education should be top priority, 33% are intending to vote Congress again
– Amongst those who voted for Congress in 2014 and also think Infrastructure should be top priority, 19% are intending to vote Congress again
Clear that Education and Infrastructure (also called development) are big negative issues for Congress
Regional Parties
– Amongst those who voted for Regional Parties in 2014 and also think Farmers welfare should be top priority, 95% are intending to vote regional parties again
– Amongst those who voted for Regional Parties in 2014 and also think healthcare should be top priority, 93% are intending to vote regional parties again
National Defence and Foreign affairs issues tend to be of importance to voters who vote for National parties while those who vote for regional parties may be more concerned by healthcare, inflation and such.
These observations will evolve and change over the next few days as we collect more data and news flow may move in another direction. How each of the parties build the correct narrative and maximise their vote share becomes crucial. For example, it makes more sense
– For BJP to talk about National Security and Infrastructure
– For Congress it makes sense to talk about Income growth and Jobs
– For Regional parties to emphasize on income growth, education, healthcare and farmers welfare.
These strategies will help each parties optimize their opportunities. We haven’t asked voters what their second preferences were but that could give us a sense of more complex strategies that parties could follow in the coming election.More updates tomorrow!