The writing has been there on the wall for the BJP in Karnataka for quite sometime. Now it’s time for reality check. The party, struggling to find its feet ever since BS Yeddyurappa left it with a difficult legacy of corruption, misgovernance and instability, and minus the crucial Lingayat vote bank, might sink below its 1999 seat tally of 44 in the assembly elections.
The results of the recently held urban local body polls offered a broad hint of things to expect in the May elections, the latest pre-poll survey by Delhi-based Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) for INN puts numbers in place to confirm the plummeting prospects of the party. Interestingly, it’s the BJP which appears to have inflicted the maximum damage on itself, not its political rivals, especially the Congress which looks set for a big victory. Neither the Congress nor the JD(S) has done enough to win over voters.
The survey gives a big win for the Congress. Of the 224 assembly seats in the state, the party is likely to secure 117-129 seats, easily crossing the halfway mark. In the previous assembly the party had 80 members. The JD(S) is likely to bag anywhere between 34 and 44 seats, marginally up from 28 in 2008. The biggest loser is the BJP with its projected seat tally down from 110 to anywhere between 39 and 49. Other political players in Karnataka don’t gain much from BJP loss. They are likely to bag 12-22, numbers still crucial if there’s a hung house.
The survey was conducted between 10 and 17 April in 294 locations across 74 constituencies and involved 4,198 respondents. The assembly constituencies were selected using the ‘Probability Proportionate to Size Method’. Four polling stations within each sampled constituency were selected using the Systematic Random Sampling (SRS) technique. The respondents were also selected using the SRS method from the most updated electoral rolls of the selected polling stations.
There could be a big drop in the vote share of the BJP this time, the survey shows. In 2008, the party commanded a vote share of 34 percent; the projected vote share in 2013 is 23 percent. It’s a big drop of 11 percent, but the direct gainer is not the Congress. The latter is expected to make a two percentage point gain – up to 37 from 35 in 2008. The JD(S) would improve its share by only one percentage point – 20 from 19. The Karnataka Janata Paksha of Yeddyurappa is likely to secure seven percent of the total vote share. However, with this small percentage he causes the maximum damage to the BJP. He not only takes away the Lingayat/Veerashaiva support base of the party, but also leaves its social coalition formula, which had proved so effective in 2008, shattered.
There have been enough indications earlier that a strong anti-incumbency wave is building up against the incumbent BJP government. The survey confirms that. To a question whether the BJP should get another chance in power, 57 percent of the respondents said no. Only 21 percent wanted the BJP back in power. They provide the reasons too. The BJP is perceived as the most corrupt, nepotistic and faction ridden among all other parties in the fray. As many as 53 percent of the respondents maintain that it is more corrupt than the Congress and the JD(S); 41 percent believe it is more nepotistic and 34 percent think it is faction-ridden.
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