BJP to retain UP with less seats, Yogi out of favour with people: Opinion Survey

The ruling Bharatiya Janatha Party will retain Uttar Pradesh in the Assembly Elections next year albeit with a slight reduction in seats won say the results of the latest round of opinion poll of more than 72,000 samples surveyed in the ABP-CVoter-IANS poll between first weeks of October and November.

According to the data, the BJP is projected to win 213-222 out of 403 seats in the Assembly Elections, which is a comfortable majority although a decrease from the 325 seats they had gained in 2017. The SP and its alliance partners, emerging as key challenger to the saffron party are expected to win 152 to 160 seats this time. The survey further shows that BSP is continuously losing the political ground in the state as the party can secure victory on just 16 to 20 seats. Congress party is likely to grab 6 to 10 seats.

Meanwhile another key trend seen in the poll results is the declining popularity of Yogi Adityanath, with 51.9% of the respondents saying that they don't want Yogi Adityanath to occupy the post while 48.9% expressed their opinion in his favour. However Yogi still remains the preferred Chief Ministerial candidate when compared to Akhilesh Yadav or Priyanka Gandhi. 41.4% of respondents viewed Yogi more favourably than the 31.4% who opined in favour of SP chief Akhilesh Yadav. 15.6% of the respondents said they want to see BSP supremo Mayawati as next Chief Minister but only 4.9% of those interviewed during the survey wanted Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra to be the next chief minister of the state.

52.8% of the respondents said that Congress will not benefit from Priyanka Gandhi being active in Uttar Pradesh, 47.2% believed that Gandhi would be able to woo enough voters for the party. Maywati was largely seen as irrelevant, with only 30.7% of voters believing she was a key contender in the race.

This means that the Congress, which has opted not to form alliances with any other party in the state, is projected to receive only 8.9% of the votes which is an improvement on the 6.3% received in 2017. According to the poll data the BSP stand to be the biggest losers as it's vote share is likely to witness a slump of 7.1% from 22.2% in 2017 to 15.1% in 2022. Akhilesh Yadav's Samajwadi Party is projected to gain an additional 7.5% of the vote share, taking the SP from 23.6% to 31.1% in the 2022 elections.

Issues like Lakhimpur Kheri, rising fuel and gas prices, Covid-19 management would be key issues at play in the elections, the poll revealed. 62.1% of the respondents opined that the Lakhimpur Kheri incident will harm the BJP's election prospects, 21.5% said that the saffron party will benefit from the incident, which snowballed into major controversy triggering widespread protests by the farming community.

Law and order (29.7%), Unemployment (16.7%), inflation (14.7%) and the upcoming Ram Temple in Ayodhya (14.1%) were the top issues of focus for the state ahead of elections.