Bihar Elections - Opinion Polls favors Nitish Kumar

Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar has reason to smile on the eve of the first phase of Assembly elections. All the prepoll opinion surveys show that the ruling Janata Dal (United)- Bharatiya Janata Party alliance will retain power in the state.

Three such exercises — conducted by Star News-A C Nielson, The Week-C Voter and the Sahara News Network — have shown the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government way ahead of its rivals. What’s more, Nitish has emerged as the most preferred chief ministerial candidate of Bihar’s 5.5-crore electorate.

According to the Star-Nielson poll, a landslide victory awaits the JD (U)-BJP alliance with a staggering tally of 170 seats in the 243- member Assembly. It has been predicted that the JD-U and BJP will get 120 and 50 seats, respectively.

The survey shows that the Rashtriya Janata Dal-Lok Janshakti Party combine is in for a near-rout as it will manage to bag only 34 seats together. It says Lalu Prasad’s RJD will win only 28 seats — well below the 54-mark that it had reached last time — while his alliance partner Ram Vilas Paswan’s party will have to be content with just six seats. The opinion poll, however, has predicted 22 seats for the Congress, which had won only nine seats last time.

To get a simple majority in Bihar, a party or an alliance needs 122 seats. The poll also says that 73 per cent voters were satisfied with the performance of both the state government and the CM.

Thankfully for Lalu and Paswan, The Week-C Voter survey does not predict a huge victory for the NDA. It says that the JD (U)-BJP alliance will fall short of a simple majority by 11 seats, but manage to stay ahead of the RJD-LJP as well as the Congress. The survey has predicted 61-67 seats for JD-U, which had won 89 seats in the previous Assembly polls in 2005. It says that the BJP, which had won 55 seats last time, will get between 49 and 55 seats.

The survey, however, says that the RJD will improve its 2005 tally of 54 seats to 70-76 seats, while the LJP will get 7-13 seats. The survey points out that the antiincumbency factor could be behind this, but it also states that the popularity of Nitish has not diminished because of this.

The Week-C Voter survey says that Nitish remains the most preferred chief ministerial candidate, with 57 per cent people voting for him. Lalu is a distant second with only 21 per cent. Unsurprisingly, the opinion polls have elicited a sharp reaction from Lalu. “The surveys are manipulated,” he said.