How is PM Modi’s loss Rahul Gandhi’s gain? Understand the mood of the nation

arun Posted On August 29, 2024

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi is still the most popular leader, but according to the survey, his popularity has declined. Rahul Gandhi’s popularity has increased, but there is no immediate threat to Modi. The biggest problems of the Modi government are unemployment and inflation. These things have come to light in India Today’s Mood of the Nation Survey.

Edited by Anil Kumar

Rahul Gandhi’s popularity increased in a recent survey
Modi is still the most people’s choice as PM
Yogi Adityanath is outshining everyone as Chief Minister

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi remains the most popular choice as the leader of the country. However, according to a recent survey, his support has decreased in favor of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, which largely reflects the recent general election results. According to the bi-annual survey conducted by India Today magazine in collaboration with polling agency C-Voter, about 49% of the respondents in the latest ‘Mood of the Nation’ survey considered Modi as the most suitable for the post of Prime Minister. Notably, this is six percentage points less than in February 2024 this year.

Rahul Gandhi’s popularity rising

Meanwhile, Rahul’s popularity increased by eight percentage points from 13.8% to 22.4%. The gap between the two leaders, however, has narrowed. However, this gap (over 26 percent) is still quite large. This indicates that the Congress leader is not an immediate threat to Modi. Interestingly, according to the India Today survey, when respondents were asked who is most suitable to become Prime Minister after Modi, Rahul is performing better than BJP’s Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath and Nitin Gadkari.

Who is the most popular Chief Minister?

However, Yogi has emerged as the most popular Chief Minister at the national level. Between July 15 and August 10, about 49% of the respondents across the country considered Modi as the most suitable Prime Minister. 40,591 respondents were surveyed. It also included inputs from 95,872 interviews from C-Voter’s regular weekly tracker. The BJP has lost its majority in Parliament in the 2024 general elections after two consecutive elections (2014 and 2019). The party had then won more than half the seats on its own. The party this time secured 240 of the 543 seats in the Lok Sabha, 32 seats short of a majority. As a result, the BJP had to rely on alliance partners, Janata Dal (United) and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) to form the government. The BJP, along with its National Democratic Alliance (NDA) allies, won 293 of the 543 seats in the current Lok Sabha.

PM’s popularity declines

The popularity may have declined, but the Mood of the Nation survey has revealed that if general elections were held now, the BJP-led alliance’s seats would increase marginally to 299. The BJP will get 244 seats on its own, four more than the actual results. The survey showed that the opposition Congress party will also improve its performance. It will move up from 99 seats to 106. However, according to the survey, India Block’s seats will fall by 1 seat from 234.

Strong as PM

Performance still strong as PM, but… When asked how they rated Modi’s performance as PM, 58.6% of respondents rated it as excellent and good. This is a drop of just two percentage points from the survey conducted before the elections in February. However, it was a significant drop compared to the 71% that Modi got in the MOTN survey conducted in August 2019. This was done soon after he won his second term as PM. The survey revealed that while 58.6% of people rated him as excellent or good, those who rated him as excellent dropped from 41.8% to 34.3%, a drop of 7.5 percentage points. While the rating of those who rated it as good increased from 18.7% to 24.3%.

What do voters want?

According to the survey respondents, while Modi remains the most popular leader, his government needs to work on some areas, especially the economy. About 28.5% of people say that the biggest problem in the country today is unemployment, followed by inflation and poor income of families. The three major achievements of the NDA are – the construction of Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, the removal of Article 370 in Kashmir and several welfare schemes, writes India Today. On the contrary, the three biggest failures of the Modi government are all related to the economy, with unemployment being the highest, followed by inflation and lack of economic growth.”