The Hindu : Front Page : Left set for landslide in West Bengal

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Front Page

Front Page

Left set for landslide in West Bengal

Sanjay Kumar, Rajeeva L. Karandikar, Supriyo Basu and Yogendra Yadav

The Hindu-CNN-IBN Poll predicts 53 % vote share and 230-240 seats for the ruling Front

New Delhi: The ruling Left Front (LF) in West Bengal is headed for its seventh successive win, and by a massive majority. The Hindu-CNN-IBN Poll, conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, suggests the Left's performance may approximate its best-ever showing, in the 1987 Assembly elections.

The main poll finding is that the LF will win about 53 per cent of the total vote, way ahead of the Trinamool Congress-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance (27 per cent) and the Congress (16 per cent). This translates into anything between 230 and 240 seats for the LF in the 294-member Assembly.

This represents an improvement on the two-thirds majority it enjoys in the existing Assembly, a gain of more than 30 seats over its tally of 199. The LF's performance resembles that of 1987, when it won 251 seats with 52.9 per cent of the vote.

These findings are not very different from those of the pre-poll survey. In this highly polarised State, most voters made up their mind well before the campaign began. Nothing appears to have happened to make them change their mind.

Pre-poll survey

The pre-poll survey, carried out in the first week of April, reported a massive lead for the LF, which would mean a harvest of three-fourths of the seats. The latest poll is a combination of post-poll surveys and exit polls. A total of 4,529 respondents spread across 224 locations in 56 Assembly constituencies were polled on whom they voted for and why.

The poll is bad news for the non-Left parties. In 2001, Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress won 60 seats in alliance with the Congress. This time, in alliance with the BJP, the party is expected to get only 32-40 seats. The Congress, which showed signs of revival by winning six parliamentary seats and leading in 35 Assembly segments in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, is likely to win 17 to 23 seats, less than the 26 it won in the last Assembly elections. The party's worst-ever performance was in 1977, when it won only 20 seats.

Several factors are behind the landslide victory for the Left. The first is the significantly higher vote share. Secondly, it has gained in areas where it needed to gain, notably in urban areas where it has been traditionally vulnerable. Thirdly, the opposition vote is more fragmented than ever.

This projection is subject to greater error than in other States, for surveys in West Bengal face the problem of "over-reporting" in favour of the Left Front. The poll has adjusted for this, but the estimates would need marginal correction if the over-reporting is higher than before.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Front Page

News Update

Stories in this Section