Exit polls 2014: Seemandhra may not have good news for BJP-TDP alliance

In Seemandhra, the neck and neck battle between the BJP-TDP alliance and the YSR Congress could be headed for a tie with both possibly winning the same number of seats in the region. Despite the BJP’s last minute pre-poll tie-up with the Telugu Desam Party, it is unlikely to yield a dramatic victory for the party in the region and also close the door on a potential alliance with the YSR Congress in the event that it does better. According to the IBN-Lokniti CSDS National Election Tracker exit poll survey, the TDP-BJP alliance is set to win between 11 t0 15 seats. The YSR Congress which is strong in the Seemandhra region is also expected to win 11-15 seats. The Times Now-ORG poll had better news for the BJP-TDP alliance which it says will win 17 seats in the state. The YSR Congress, according to this survey, will win only 8 seats in the region while the Congress as expected is not expected to win a single seat in the region. [caption id=“attachment_1520311” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Jagan Reddy could win the same number of seats as the TDP-BJP alliance. PTI[/caption] The ABP News-Nielsen survey predicted that the YSR Congress will win 18 seats in the region while the TDP-BJP should win 12 seats in the state.  According to the IBN-Lokniti survey, the Telugu Desam Party-BJP alliance is expected to emerge on top but merely by a whisker. The survey projects the alliance coming on top, with 45 percent voter share, beating away the YSR Congress, which is expected to get 43 percent of the votes polled. The Congress is expected to get 7 percent of the vote share while other parties are expected to get 10 percent of the vote share. In Coastal Andhra Pradesh region the TDP-BJP alliance is expected to come up on top, while in the Rayalaseema region it is Jaganmohan Reddy’s YSR Congress that is expected to garner a higher vote share. The exit poll also threw up some interesting findings. It found that the rural voters were equally divided between the TDP-BJP alliance and the YSR Congress. However, when it came to the urban voters, the survey found that the TDP-BJP alliance enjoyed greater popularity than the YSR Congress. The survey also found that while a larger number of younger voters (between 18-25 years of age) preferred the YSR Congress over the TDP-BJP alliance, a majority of the older voters (over 56 years of age) preferred the TDP-BJP alliance. The exit poll also found that while the TDP-BJP enjoyed popularity among the Kamma, Kapu and other backward castes in the region, the YSR Congress is the favourite of the Reddy, Muslim and Christian communities. The TDP-BJP may not have benefited from picking Modi as its prime ministerial candidate in the region, with a majority saying that they didn’t have any particular preference for a prime ministerial candidate. Among those who had a preference, 35 percent of the respondents said that they would prefer Narendra Modi as the prime ministerial candidate. The exit poll found that even if Modi wasn’t the prime ministerial candidate, those who backed the alliance would have cast their vote in its favour. The survey found that a majority of the voters cast their ballot based on the local candidate.