The battle lines have been drawn for Madhya Pradesh, with the ruling BJP gung-ho about chances of returning to the hustings and the Congress, too, hopeful of upsetting their applecart, cashing in on anti-incumbency, if any.
While the BJP declared its candidates for all seats, with CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan, too, grabbing a ticket, albeit belatedly, the Congress has also announced its candidates at the expense of drawing the ire of its I.N.D.I.A partner Samajwadi Party.
Meanwhile, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav threatened payback in Uttar Pradesh, claiming the Congress reneged on its promise of setting aside 6 seats for his party in the state.
In light of the SP-Congress rift, are the polls going to be a cakewalk for the BJP? A survey conducted by ABP, in association with CVoter, has thrown some light on how the parties in fray might end up with regard to seat tally.
As far as the range of seats are concerned, the ABP-CVoter snap poll shows Congress is set to wrest power back from the BJP as it is likely to win 124 seats as compared to 114 in the last elections. The BJP, on the other hand, is likely to win around 105 seats.
The range of seat projection for the Congress is seen to be 118 to 130, while for BJP it is 99 to 111.
The snap poll further shows the grand old party will bag 44.3 percent of the total votes, while BJP will get 42.1 percent of the total votes cast for the 230-member assembly.
The vote percentage for BSP is seen to be 2.2 and other parties is likely to be somewhere around 11.4 percent.
The high-octane elections in Madhya Pradesh is going to take place on November 17 and the results will be announced on December 3.
[Current survey findings and projections are based on CVoter Pre Poll CATI interviews conducted among 18+ adults statewide, all confirmed voters (sample size 28,323). The data is weighted to the known demographic profile of the States. Sometimes the table figures do not sum to 100 due to the effects of rounding. Our final data file has Socio-Economic profile within +/- 1% of the Demographic profile of the State. We believe this will give the closest possible trends. The sample spread is across all Assembly segments in the poll bound state. MoE is +/- 3% at macro level and +/- 5% at micro level VOTE SHARE projection with 95% Confidence interval.]