Delhi's Aam Aadmi Party has made surprising gains in the last few days ahead of the Delhi assembly elections to be held for February 7, polls conducted by agencies CVoter and C Fore reveal.
Both polls show there is a clear 'class-based' voting and a gender-based preference for the AAP and it's leader Arvind Kejriwal. Significantly, extracts of CVoter's latest tracking poll conducted on February 2 show a further gain for AAP with a 41% vote share versus 43% for BJP. For the fourth week of January - or last week - this stood at 40% for AAP and 45% for BJP.
C fore's latest survey actually had both BJP and AAP positioned equally with a 38% vote share each. The results were published on 29 January. C fore's Premchand Palety said he could see a momentum building too in favour of AAP in the last six weeks, a fact borne out by most media reports which also attributed BJP's late campaigning to it's weak showing in the polls.
"For me also, it's more than a photo-finish, in a bi-polar race, more than a 2% gap is unusual. I don't remember when was the last time we were looking at this peculiar phenomenon when two parties were both gaining till the last date to the detriment of the third party, in this case the Indian National Congress," said Mr Deshmukh.
On trying to crystal gaze for the week ahead, Palety felt that it was now dangerous to predict from here on where things could go. "I think exit polls are the best answer from here," he said, adding that lots of things could change in the last 24 hours and it was possible that political parties could use unfair methods to sway voters.
What was clear however was that in contrast to the Lok Sabha results of May 2014, Delhi's voters appear to have forgiven Kejriwal for quitting the Government last year - in 49 days.
What is also working for AAP is the perception of corruption of inflation as key issues that are driving voter desires. And AAP being a solution provider, despite having less to show in terms of actual governance delivered.
Both Palety and Deshmukh concurred that this was also perhaps the first election that there were class-based divides in electoral preferences which in turn would play a signficant role in determining outcomes.
Finally, women voters would play a significant role and much would depend on how they turn out at the booths. And there are historical precedents to women voters determining the final outcome. With Kiran Bedi appealing to women too, the mix gets interesting.
Incidentally, a ABP News - Nielsen poll on February 2 also predicted a hung assembly projecting AAP likely to emerge as the single largest party with 35 seats and BJP getting 29 seats.
Even as Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) convener Arvind Kejriwal and BJP's CM candidate Kiran Bedi lock horns over party advertisements, an opinion poll on Monday predicted a hung Assembly in Delhi with AAP likely to emerge as the single largest party with 35 seats. BJP is projected to get 29 seats. Congress was projected to get six seats.
"It's a battle between AAP's strong volunteer base and BJP's strong cadre base," said Mr Deshmukh.