The Hindu : 49 p.c. vote share predicted for NCP-Congress in Maharashtra

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Thursday, Apr 01, 2004

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49 p.c. vote share predicted for NCP-Congress in Maharashtra

By Mahesh Vijapurkar

MUMBAI, MARCH 31. The Nationalist Congress Party today made public a survey by AC Nielsen which projects a 49 per cent vote share for the NCP-Congress combine in Maharashtra and 31 of the State's 48 Lok Sabha seats.

It has projected a 44 per cent share for the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party combine, translating into 17 seats.

Though commissioned by the NCP to help shape its campaign strategy and that of its ally, it was made public to clear the impression created by ``other surveys'' that they were losing, the Finance Minister, Jayant Patil, said.

"We did both the field work and analysis for this survey, " said Partha Rakshit, managing director of AC Nielsen who met the media at the NCP office.

In an NDTV-The Indian Express poll earlier, it had only done the field work. The NDTV poll had predicted 27 seats for the BJP-Sena and 20 for the Congress-NCP. "We have no comments on the projections in that poll; we are confident about this one."

The official said 20 per cent of the 73,000 sample size was undecided and "things can change in a month."

A small margin of error or a two per cent swing from the projections could mean a difference of 30 seats.

The forecasting model depended not so much on the intent as the swing in the intent from the previous election results. This was the largest ever sample size in Maharashtra.

Mr. Rakshit said his organisation had not carried out a similar survey for any other political entity anywhere in the country. The figure of 31 seats was "directional."

The poll was completed during the last week of February and the first week of March and covered 350 towns and 1,300 villages, encompassing all the 288 Assembly segments.

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