With several Opposition parties joining hands to take on the Narendra Modi juggernaut in the 2024 Lok Sabha election, a majority of voters feel Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is best suited to lead the INDIA bloc, as per India Today’s Mood of the Nation opinion poll.
Rahul Gandhi received 21 per cent of the total votes to emerge as the top choice to lead the Opposition camp.
The Mood of the Nation’s February 2024 edition is based on a survey of 35,801 respondents in all Lok Sabha seats. Health warning: Opinion polls can get it wrong.
The Mood of the Nation poll was conducted between December 15, 2023 and January 28, 2024 and hence, doesn’t take into account the recent political developments in the last few weeks and consequent changes in alliance arithmetic.
Last month, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge was named as the chairperson of the INDIA bloc even though an official announcement was not made. The Mood of the Nation poll revealed that only 6 per cent of those surveyed favoured Kharge to lead the Opposition bloc, which comprises around 24 parties.
After Rahul Gandhi, AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee were tied at second spot to lead the INDIA camp. Both Arvind Kejriwal and Mamata Banerjee were favoured by around 17 per cent of those surveyed.
In fact, both the leaders saw a rise in their ratings by two percentage points from the last Mood of the Nation survey conducted in August 2023. Rahul Gandhi, meanwhile, has seen a dip, with 24 per cent of those surveyed voting for the Congress leader in August 2023.
The dip in the rating comes as another Mood of the Nation survey revealed that a majority of voters found the performance of Rahul Gandhi as opposition leader to be poor. Around 35 per cent of those surveyed said the former Congress chief’s performance was ‘poor’, while 23 per cent voted for ‘outstanding’.
Around 16 per cent of those surveyed found the Wayanad MP’s performance to be ‘good’, while another 16 per cent called it ‘average’.
Gandhi has led the Congress charge against the BJP with his two padayatras, criss-crossing the length and breadth of the country. While his six-month-long, 4,500-kilometre ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ concluded last year, Gandhi is presently on his ‘Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra’, which will travel through 15 states.
However, as per the Mood of the Nation survey, around 32 per cent of the voters said Gandhi’s yatra would have no impact on Lok Sabha polls. While around 25 per cent of those surveyed felt it was a great political move, 20 per cent said Gandhi would get public attention. Another 11 per cent felt the yatra was just an image management drill.
But, will the voters weigh in on Rahul’s padayatra while casting their vote? The survey revealed that 48 per cent of the voters would not gauge the Bharat Jodo Yatra as compared to 37 per cent who said they would.
In line with the above observation, a majority (42 per cent) of those surveyed opined that Rahul Gandhi’s politics did not improve after the yatra. Only around 35 per cent replied in the affirmative.
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