Delhi Elections: Opinion poll predicts 18 seats for Kejriwal's party, hung house

NEW DELHI: With almost two months to go to the Delhi assembly elections, the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is gathering momentum, making it a genuinely triangular contest, an opinion poll has suggested. The net outcome, the poll projects, is likely to be a hung assembly with no party in a position to form the government.

The poll, conducted by AC Nielsen for ABP News, indicates that AAP will win 26% of the votes and 18 seats in the 70-member assembly. The same agency's poll in August had predicted 15% of votes and just 8 seats for AAP.

It also indicates that Arvind Kejriwal is the most preferred CM candidate with 32% backing him, against 27% each for CM Sheila Dikshit and BJP's Vijay Goel.

The poll projects that BJP will emerge as the largest party with 28 seats and 34% votes, while Congress will finish second with 22 seats and 27% of the votes.

For both these parties, the latest seat tallies are down from what was predicted in the August survey. That round had estimated that BJP would win 32 seats and Congress 27.

What would be worrying the two national parties most about these projections, if they believe them, would be that the new entrant to Delhi's politics is already snapping close on the heels of Congress and is not too far behind BJP in both seats and votes. What if this momentum continues, could well be the big question in the minds of their leaders.

The 11 percentage point surge in AAP's vote share between the August and October polls has come largely from eating into the votes of 'others' in the fray. That could spell trouble for BSP. BJP, in fact, is shown as retaining the 34% vote share it had in the August poll, while Congress' share is down by two percentage points from the earlier estimate.

In the CM stakes too, Kejriwal's jump from 24% in August to 32% in the latest poll hasn't come at the expense of either Dikshit or Goel. In fact, those two have also gained from 22% and 26% respectively two months ago. The percentage of those who indicated in 'no preference' is down from 14% in August to 2% now, and the bulk of that seems to have gone Kejriwal's way.