New Delhi: Even after six years at the helm of the country's affairs, Prime Minister Narendra Modi continues to hold sway over the electorate, findings of the IANS-CVoter's Republic Day edition of 'State of the Nation' (SOTN) survey indicate.
On the flip side, Chief Ministers of opposition-ruled states enjoy more popularity than their BJP counterparts. The findings, released on January 26, show that Delhi's Arvind Kejriwal continues as the most popular Chief Minister in the country.
The survey results show that 60.5 percent of the respondents are satisfied with the present BJP government at the Centre.
Dr. Yashwant Deshmukh of CVoter told IANS that despite the rumblings over CAA and NRC, the ground reality shows that Narendra Modi remains the most preferred candidate for Prime Minister of India, with 66.4 percent of people surveyed expressing satisfaction with his performance.
"Except for Maharashtra, due to loss of Shiv Sena, where they may lose 15 seats, BJP will win in 290 seats and along with allies can win 330 seats," he said.
A popularity deficit is indicated for Congress interim chief and UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi who polled negative net popularity ratings of 1.1 percent. The popularity ratings don't paint as a dismal figure for former party President Rahul Gandhi who walked away with positive ratings of 5.6 percent.
However, the survey findings do have some worrying trends for the BJP.
In the results of responses to a question gauging people's satisfaction with their state government, only two BJP-ruled states, Himachal and Assam, figured among the top 10, as well as Bihar, where there is a coalition government.
The BJD government in Odisha topped the list with 80 per cent approval ratings. Other state governments in the top ten list include Jharkhand, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Rajasthan, and Bihar.
When it comes to Chief Ministers' popularity levels, Delhi's Kejriwal topped the list with 80 per cent approvals. Here too, only one BJP Chief Minister, Jairam Thakur of Himachal Pradesh, figures among the top 10.
Others in the top ten list include the Chief Ministers of Chhattisgarh (Bhupesh Baghel of the Congres), Jharkhand (Hemant Soren of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha), Odisha (Naveen Patnaik of the Biju Janata Dal), Andhra Pradesh (Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy of the YSR Congress), Bihar (Nitish Kumar), Kerala (Pinarayi Vijayan of the Left Democratic Front), Rajasthan (Ashok Gehlot of the Congress) and West Bengal (Mamata Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress).
The IANS-CVoter Republic Day SOTN survey findings were collated on the basis of data compiled over the previous 12 weeks running up to January 25. The sample size comprises of 30,240 people spread across 543 Lok Sabha seats. The margin of error is +/- 3 percent at the macro level and +/- 5 percent at the micro level.