BJP scores big on national security, Congress pushes back on welfare

Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi

While the warmth of India's tough response on the Pulwama bombing remains more or less intact for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJPs prospects going forward for the impending hustings, the Congress seems to be getting traction with its NYAY scheme.

The latest edition of the IANS-CVoter poll tracker released on Sunday is showing a distinct negative bias of 16.2 per cent against PM Modi on the economic welfare metric. Similarly, communal tension also shows a negative bias for PM Modi.

But overall, on all the rest of the metrics, Modi trumps Congress President Rahul Gandhi. However, on rising prices where people are finding themselves under the cosh despite inflation having virtually being bottled up by the Modi government, the Congress once again scores and this could be a factor in the coming election.

The cumulative sample size for the IANS-CVoter poll tracker since January 1 is 70,000 while the figure since March 24 is 7,000.

The poll tracker poses 10 questions and asks which of those could be considered the most important problem - on the basis of which respondents are to determine their preference for either Modi or Gandhi as Prime Minister. On many of the issues that Congress has flagged as critical to the party's election campaign, it appears that people believe that Modi is doing well.

On unemployment, Modi leads by 23.9 per cent, with the approval of 56.4 per cent while Gandhi gets support from 32.5 per cent. Those who are unable to decide to comprise 4.2 per cent of the sample size.

On a related issue of family income/poverty, Modi is ahead but not by too much. He has the support of 51.2 per cent compared to Gandhi's 36.8 per cent, giving him a lead of 14.4 per cent, indicating people have worries on this front.

Modi, quite expectedly, scores hugely on the national security issue. On whether terror attacks are a problem, 77.4 per cent of respondents have given the thumbs-up to the PM while a comparatively minuscule 16.2 per cent are able to see the issue from Gandhi's point of view, giving Modi a positive of 61.2 per cent.

Modi's personal reputation on corruption evidently helps the party score on the issue. The crosstabulation shows that 63.9 per cent would vote for Modi and 25.4 per cent would support Gandhi, giving the PM a lead of 38.4 per cent.

The IANS-CVoter poll tracker throws up a surprise to opponents of the government's performance in education. Charges of saffronisation and such appear not to have stuck and as a result, to the question whether the educational system under Modi could be a problem, the figures show a 38.6 per cent positive for the PM - his 62.7 per cent against Gandhi's 24.1 per cent.

On electricity/road/water the gap narrows - 52 per cent for the PM and 35.4 per cent for Gandhi -- showing a preference of 16.6 per cent for Modi.

The question of women's security, though, could pose some worries for the Modi government as he leads by just 3.8 per cent - 45.5 per cent in his favour versus 41.7 per cent in Gandhi's.

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