Urban Lok Sabha Opinion Poll: Budget helps BJP recover some lost momentum

In our previous article, we made the important point that BJP could gain significantly on account of the Budget. The data for the top 19 cities is here (4000 sample, Two weeks, 3% error, 99% Confidence)

As can be seen in the data, BJP is trending to lose signifiantly amongst the Twitter class (Upper Class) which also explains the frustration on realising that the Tax rebates were applicable to the lower income brackets. The other group that hasn’t changed much is the urban poor class who have a sweet-sour relationship with BJP. At one level, a whole host of Yojanas are materially and positively impacting them but at the other end, wage growth has (probably) slowed down as one can see in the RBI income reports (Urban). Overall, BJP’s lead versus Congress will slightly fall from 2014. However, the big win for the BJP is the middle and lower middle class. 

Our opinion poll data has trended upwards everyday with this group post the budget announcement. This is more money in the hands of households (much more than even farmers) and therefore many voters have returned back to the BJP. One needs to see if this sustains over the next two weeks owing to the likely formal announcements by the Opposition. This is how the trend looks over the last two weeks in the 19 cites we cover in our opinion poll

As one can see, the gap between BJP and Congress was 19.1% in 2014, it is now down to 14.8%, a swing of 4.3%. The BJP will need to push harder amongst both the upper income groups and lower income groups (total of about 40% of voters) because it is highly likely that Congress will target ateast some of the 60% middle and lower middle class voters.

After a poor October-December, BJP has had a good January and February so far. One needs to see the Opposition can come up with a few aces of their own!