The Congress-NCP alliance in Maharashtra on Wednesday came out with an opinion poll results for the 48 Lok Sabha seats in the state, with 31 in their favour and 17 to the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance.
"The opinion poll, conducted by ACNielsen for the Cong-NCP, has indicated 31 seats to the DF-alliance while remaining 17 to Shiv Sena-BJP," senior NCP leader and state Finance Minister Jayant Patil told reporters here.
Though, the Sena-BJP has upper hand in 17 seats, he further said the difference in the poll result in 10 of the 17 seats between the two alliance was very small and could later go in favour of Cong-NCP alliance.
The survey carried out by the private agency have indicated 49 per cent votes to the Cong-NCP alliance while 44 per cent to saffron alliance in the state, Patil said.
The NCP leader further said they had carried out the survey for planning their campaign strategy for the Lok Sabha elections in the state, but had to release it to media after other opinion polls by political parties and media organisations coming out against them.
Partha Rakshit, Managing Director of ACNielsen Research Services, said the survey was one of the extensive ones carried out in the country in which 73,000 persons, spread across 350 towns and 1,300 villages, interviewed in all the 48 Lok Sabha constituencies of Maharashtra.
{{/usCountry}}Partha Rakshit, Managing Director of ACNielsen Research Services, said the survey was one of the extensive ones carried out in the country in which 73,000 persons, spread across 350 towns and 1,300 villages, interviewed in all the 48 Lok Sabha constituencies of Maharashtra.
{{/usCountry}}The survey carried out in February and upto first week of March included 80 per cent of voters that had made up their mind while 20 per cent were still to make up their mind, he said adding, those still unconfirmed can turn out to be decisive in the election results.
Patil further informed that the survey analysis also said that the main reasons for voting for a particular party were because of the leader of the party, can ensure justice for poor, can improve villages, can help farmers and can provide more employment.
On the main problems faced by the electorate in the state, he said unemployment, unavailability of drinking water, poor road connectivity and inadequate housing were the dominant ones according to the survey.
When asked on the different opinion poll results conducted by ACNielsen for a prominent news channel and Cong-NCP, Rakshit said they had only done field work for the opinion poll carried out by the channel which had done the interpretation while the entire process of opinion poll for Cong-NCP was done by his agency.