It has become conventional wisdom that sitting Prime Minister Narendra Modi gets the most credit for the incredible rise in the electoral strength of the BJP since 2014. While the majority of the states find maximum anger against elected representatives or state governments, the PM’s ratings remain on the higher side, as per the latest media-CVoter Anti-Incumbency Tracker.
The teflon coating is normal in the Hindi heartland but even the states where the anger levels against the PM are very low throw up some surprises; at least on the surface.
The three states where voters are least angry with the PM are Chhattisgarh (6.7 percent), Delhi (8.6 percent), and West Bengal (9.8 percent). The first two are on predictable lines, but the numbers of West Bengal show the state might be witnessing another internal churn, practically because the ruling Trinamool Congress has a complete grip on all layers of power in the state, from panchayats to municipalities and also with the historically high number of MLAs in the assembly, causing the anti-incumbency sentiment to get concentrated at local governance more than the national governance.
However, against the flow of the tide, some BJP-dominated states like Goa, Jharkhand, and Karnataka also show higher than average levels of voter anger against the prime minister.
This was revealed in an exclusive analysis for media conducted for the quarterly anti-incumbency data collected by CVoter through its daily tracker polls. This could be food for thought for poll strategists in the BJP who have become famous for their 24/7 approach to elections.
Besides, surveys conducted by CVoter, and a host of other agencies have shown repeatedly that the Prime Minister remains the most popular leader of the country. In the immediate aftermath of the second wave of the Covid pandemic, the popularity and approval ratings of the PM did look shaky; but he remained the most popular.
In this quarterly anti-incumbency analysis done by CVoter for media, Goa, Jharkhand, and Karnataka stand out as states where voters are unexpectedly unhappy with the PM. For instance, 35.8 percent of the respondents in Goa were most unhappy with the PM; the numbers were 25.9 per cent and 25.6 percent, respectively, for Jharkhand and Karnataka. The BJP had virtually swept almost all Lok Sabha seats in these three states in the 2019 general elections.
The other states where respondents expressed high levels of dissatisfaction with the PM were predictable: Punjab, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu. These three states have had maximum negative ratings for PM Modi over the last eight years.
