NEW DELHI (TIP): BJP will emerge as the single largest party in the coming parliamentary elections, a survey has claimed. “BJP has emerged as a clear winner across the country, (more so in north and west). Majority of young people, in the age group of 18 to 30, favoured the party. While in south, both BJP and Congress were running neck to neck,” a survey by AC Nelson-ABP News said. Majority of people from north (around 42%) were unhappy with the performance of UPA-2 and in a setback to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the respondents rated his performance “even below his government’s performance”, it claimed. Narendra Modi has emerged as the favourable prime ministerial candidate as more than 60% people expressed satisfaction on his performance, the survey said, adding that majority of people feels that the Gujarat chief minister should be declared as BJP’s PM candidate.

More than 60% have rated Modi’s performance as good or very good, he was more popular among the voters from north, younger generation and affluent. 70% respondents in Gujarat rated Modi’s performance as very good or good, with a mean score of 4.3, the survey said. Modi clearly emerged as front runner for the post of PM, followed by Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and Manmohan Singh. Across all zones except south, Modi emerged as the clear choice for the post of PM, while in south, he was neck to neck with Rahul Gandhi. Singh’s performance was rated as poor and very poor among the north Indian voters, who rated his performance even below the performance of UPA-2 government. Around 40% of the respondents feel that Singh was responsible for poor economic situation of the country. But surprisingly, in southern states, 45% people held finance minister P Chidambaram responsible for it. Congress may be calling itself as secular but people held both Congress and BJP equally responsible for communalisation of politics.