Exclusive: Mood Of The National Poll

Four months away from the general election, our survey shows the NDA in a vulnerable position for the first time. 2019 is far from being in the bag

- Raj Chengappa

For Narendra Modi, the choice for the voter in the upcoming general election is clear: Do you want a majboor (helpless) government or a majboot (strong) one? The prime minister spoke in the same vein in his speech at the annual Pravasi Bharatiya Divas in Varanasi on January 22 even though only around 25,000 non-resident Indians—a miniscule percentage of the total electorate—are expected to vote.

For Modi, the hour of reckoning is nigh and it is turning out to be a surprisingly tougher fight than his party had anticipated. Just a year-and-a-half ago, his re-election as prime minister was considered a given. Now, it is no more a certainty. Instead, Modi is aware that every vote, including that of NRIs (apart from the money they could donate for the party), counts. Forget the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) repeating its feat of winning a majority on its own as it did in 2014, it is far from certain that even the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) can cross the 272 mark in Parliament.

That is the stunning conclusion of the India Today Group-Karvy Insights biannual Mood of the Nation (MOTN) survey conducted between December 28, 2018, and January 8, 2019. This MOTN is significant as it comes barely four months before the general election. Also because it is the first time since Modi came to power in May 2014 that an MOTN poll is predicting that the NDA will not cross the majority mark. It confirms the declining trend in its fortunes that these surveys have recorded in the past two years with the NDA and the BJP progressively losing ground.