Five reasons AAP's winning the battle of opinion polls, Opinion polls shows clear majority of AAP in deli polls, AAP wins delhi polls according to recent survey result

Five reasons AAP's winning the battle of opinion polls

Arvind Kejriwal and the AAP may not have won the Delhi Assembly election just yet but when it comes to opinion polls the party seems to have taken a clear lead over the BJP and its chief ministerial candidate, Kiran Bedi.

While two opinion polls predict -- the Hindustan Times-C fore and Economic Times-TNS -- an AAP victory and a majority in the Delhi Assembly, the ABP-Nielsen survey predicts a hung assembly with the AAP likely to finish one seat short of a majority at 35 seats while the BJP is projected to get 29 seats.

The Economic Times-TNS survey shows the AAP will gain 36-40 seats with a vote share of 49% while BJP will end up with win 28-32 seats. The Hindustan Times-C fore survey claimsthat AAP will win 36-41 seats while the BJP will finish with 27-32 seats. The Congress will end in the single digits, according to all the surveys.

This is quite a fall for a party that was consistently leading every opinion poll over the past year. So why is the BJP now poised to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory? Here are five reasons for this astonishing reversal of fortune.

Discounting the Mufflerman

Almost everyone wrote off Arvind Kejriwal after the debacle at Varanasi, where he was roundly defeated by the BJP's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi. His drubbing, coming soon after his hasty exit from the Delhi Chief Minister's post, seemed to spell the end of Kejriwal who went from giant-killer to bhagora in one fell swoop. However, the delay in announcing fresh elections to the national capital allowed the AAP chief to steadily work his way into the limelight and voter consciousness again. Unlike Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi, who retreated into a cave after the Lok Sabha polls never to be seen except at rallies, Kejriwal has been consistent in his engagement with people. And while he may have been seen as politically weak or foolish, Kejriwal never lost his image of integrity.

Besides cleverly turning the Muffler Man and BJP's other barbs to his advantage , Kejriwal has since directly addressed his mistakes, including the 'bhagora' tag with the clear promise that he will never quit pretty much anything again. From being the runaway, Kejriwal is now the repentant leader who still comes with the promise of clean politics and sops for the poor. A combination of sincerity and appeasement that was dismissed by the BJP, but has now proved irresistible to the Delhi voter.

The Kiran Bedi factor

She'd been rumoured to be the BJP's chief ministerial candidate for months, but the BJP delayed making the call until the election dates were announced -- and found itself mired immediately in unwelcome controversy. BJP leaders rebelled against the ascension of a rank outsider, the AAP targeted her with the relish and assurance that comes with intimate knowledge of one's opponent's weaknesses -- including her tendency to speak at length and often without focus.

From being the straight talking no-nonsense policewoman who wasn't afraid to speak her mind, Bedi has been reduced to the figurehead of a campaign that the BJP hopes to win on the star power of other leaders like Vasundhra Raje and Shivraj Chouhan who have been helicoptered in to save the day. Every opinion poll so far has put her behind Kejriwal.

As per the Economic Times poll, 49 percent of the respondents preferred Kejriwal while 43 percent said they would prefer Kiran Bedi. The Hindustan Times survey says the lead is wider with 46 percent of the respondents preferring the AAP chief as the next chief minister while 37 percent want Bedi. The surveys also show that she was preferred as a chief ministerial candidate right until the BJP picked her to be the face of its campaign.

The absence of a Harsh Vardhan

In 2013, the BJP's chief ministerial candidate Dr Harsh Vardhan. Apart from a strong political track record he also enjoyed the blessings of the Delhi unit of the BJP -- advantages that the BJP cast aside to bring him into the Union cabinet.  Perhaps, the multiple victories in state polls may have lulled the BJP into complacency. But the absence of a leader left a rudderless state BJP unit adrift for valuable months even as Kejriwal and AAP steadily regained ground.  The parachuting of Bedi into their ranks served to expose the cracks rather than unite the troops.

The BJP's failure to fix itself is revealed in a series of unnecessary controversies that have stymied Bedi, from hercampaign assistant's resignation to protests by BJP leaders' supporters, that threaten to derail Bedi's prospects even in a 'safe seat' like Krishna Nagar . The BJP has in the past been swift to quell the first sign of  dissent, but its delay in doing so this in the face of a spirited contest by Kejriwal could mean the much vaunted Amit Shah-Narendra Modicombination may start this year with its first electoral loss.

Failure to look beyond the middle class

The Hindustan Times-C fore survey is greatly instructive in revealing the secret of AAP's electoral fortunes. While the middle class of Delhi switched sides to the BJP for the Lok Sabha polls and remain in its camp,  the lower  middle class and poor stand firmly behind the AAP, held firm by his promises of cheaper water and power, a corruption-free government and greater transparency -- and the absence of a credible Congress campaign.  The HT survey finds that the AAP leads the BJP among those who earn less than Rs 3 lakh per year and it is well ahead of the BJP among those earning between Rs 1 to 2 lakh per annum.

BJP chief Amit Shah explained this support in dismissive terms, saying, "(the poor are) a section that responds to someone who promises ‘I will give you everything for free’.” But the BJP has hardly been short on promises ranging from development to women's safety. As columnist Santosh Desai explains that the roots of the support from the AAP's may lie in a more complex urban reality:

As cities prosper, it would seem that they grow unhappier. The city, at a gross level becomes more attractive, while at the net level, it becomes less livable. This dichotomy between having better lives while living miserably lies at the heart of a new urban political vocabulary that the AAP has carved out for itself. 

The AAP has successfully tapped into the angst of those who haven't seen the benefits of sabka vikas just yet, a talent that others like the Congress once possessed. The BJP may have been the aspirational party for poor Dalits in rural areas, but they failed recreate that magic in Delhi.

Modi's fading cult

In April 2014, the BJP swept Delhi winning in 60 of the 70 assembly constituencies that constitute the national capital's seven Lok Sabha seats. Buoyed by the support for its prime ministerial candidate, every BJP candidate in Delhi swept to victory with comfortable margins. But by December 2014, the Modi tsunami seemed to have run its course, as evidenced by the empty seats at the Ramlila maidan during his recent campaign rally.

In his speech, Modi directly took on Kejriwal, unlike his campaign in Varanasi where he completely ignored the AAP candidate. The BJP perhaps assumed that PM Modi would easily vanquish an opponent he had once trumped as a mere candidate, and were only to eager to turn Delhi election into a Modi vs Kejriwal redux. And in making that strategic miscalculation, Modi revived Kejriwal political career and is poised to turn him into a giant-killer once again.

 src:firstpost

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