Big boost for saffron power: India Today Mood of the Nation opinion poll puts Narendra Modi in the lead in PM race

If Lok Sabha elections were held today, the BJP would create history by reaching a never before total. The India Today Group-CVoter Mood of the Nation Poll shows that the BJP could get up to 188 seats, and the NDA close to 220.

The Congress faces a meltdown. Keeping in mind that the poll was conducted before the AAP's 'anarchy' dharna in the Capital (between December 16 and January 16), it is projected to eat into the urban vote of both national parties. The Congress will be hit hardest in three-way fights. Even where it's a direct BJP-Congress battle or a Congress versus non-BJP, non-AAP fight, the Grand Old Party (GOP) faces a rout.

- The BJP is emerging as undisputed single largest party in India, crossing their previous best of 182 seats in 1999. In terms of vote share, it might just cross the psychologically important 30 per cent vote mark which has eluded the BJP all along. The real swing for the BJP is coming from the Hindi heartland, especially in the states where the contest is primarily bipolar between the Congress and the BJP. In states like Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa and Jharkhand the Congress meltdown is complete. Same is the case where a direct contest of UPA/NDA is on cards, including Maharashtra and Punjab. The face-savers for the Congress are just the two states of Karnataka and Assam.

- While the AAP effect seems to have given jitters to the BJP campaign in urban areas, the real side effect of the AAP could be a complete meltdown of the Congress. The GOP of India is staring at its worst ever defeat in electoral history and the probability of its tally getting below 100 is very high at the moment. As mentioned in the Congress vs BJP states, a similar meltdown is on cards even in the states where the BJP is nonexistent and a third option is the main contestant to the Congress. So in states like Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, West Bengal, Jammu & Kashmir and Tamil Nadu the Congress is heading for a complete rout. The regional parties like the TMC, BJD, AIADMK, YSRCP, TRS and TDP apart from the Left Front are expected to gain big time at the expense of the Congress.

- In the battleground states of UP and Bihar, the headline is the emergence of the BJP and Narendra Modi after a gap of 15 years. Both these battleground states are going to witness a multi-cornered contest and the division of votes might result in a weird proportion of seats won with lesser number of votes polled. While Akhilesh Yadav and Nitish Kumar are putting up a brave face against all odds, chances are that the BJP rising might result in an equal upswing for Mayawati and Lalu Prasad in these states. In more than one way the states of UP and Bihar might eventually decide the race to 7 RCR.

- If elections are held today, on its current form the NDA will be about 60 seats short of the magic figure of 272. But if the Modi juggernaut sweeps the critical states of UP and Bihar, then this requirement might drastically drop to just about 30 seats, which is easy to cobble up as there will be many parties open and willing to join the Modi bandwagon. But if the pro-Modi sentiment gets entangled in the multi-cornered contest of UP and Bihar and doesn't yield enough result, then the regional players will become big time kingmakers, or may be king themselves.

- This might result in Mayawati, Mamata Banerjee, Jayalalithaa, Naveen Patnaik, K. Chandrasekhar Rao and Jagan Reddy as the probable kingmakers as they will be controlling about 125 MPs between them. Of these, barring Naveen, everyone else is open to doing business with the Congress as well. So, the ambition of becoming the PM might not be a bad thing to start with. Keep an eye on Mayawati as she might get back with enough number as the third largest political party in India and if nothing works out, then she could be the compromise candidate in any form of combination.

-The BJP is gaining big time in UP and Bihar, and if this trend continues, then the BJP crossing 200 might be a possibility. In that case, Modi will need just one or two of these regional parties to cross the line. But in case the current projection go down, largely because of upswing of the AAP and a split in urban middle class votes, then the allies might come with all sort of terms and conditions. This might not augur well for Modi. With 180 plus seats the BJP could still dictate its own PM candidate, but insisting on Modi might not be pragmatic. In such a scenario the other faces within the BJP could get a chance, those who are seen "milder" and acceptable to the regional allies. The natural names to prop up are Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley. But the real dark horse in the race is Rajnath Singh, simply because he might be acceptable to all allies and most importantly, he carries the approval stamp of Nagpur.

- The AAP national vote share is coming out 8 per cent at the moment. This will fetch about 10 seats. It might replace the BSP and the CPI(M) as the third largest political party in India in terms of vote share. Their vote share will consist of largely three components. First part is the BSP votes outside Uttar Pradesh. The maximum impact of the AAP is in the NCR region and adjoining states of Delhi, including Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Jammu & Kashmir apart from the Union Territory of Chandigarh. These are pre-cisely the areas where the BSP has scored votes big time over the last 20 odd years.

- The second component of the AAP votes is the urban middle class voters who are primarily anti-Congress. These voters will increase the cumulative vote share of the AAP in urban seats across India. The third component is the nonpolitical passive voter, which might go out to vote and increase the turnout and share of the AAP at large.

- Other than these areas, the AAP is not getting big time support in the rest of India, especially in rural areas at the moment. However, even with just an additional 5 per cent national swing, they can cross 30 seats in Parliament and unsettle the probable equations. However, it must be kept in mind that it's never the spread of the votes but the strategic concentration of votes which make you win the seats. The BJP in 1984 got approximately 8 per cent votes but ended up with just 2 seats. It was the strategic concentration and adjustment in 1989 which resulted in mere 9 per cent votes but an impressive 84 seats in Parliament. Similarly, the BSP became the third largest political party in India years back in terms of vote share. But it is the inability to concentrate which made it impossible for them to win seats outside Uttar Pradesh. In other words, the AAP phenomenon is largely like the BSP phenomenon. Like the BSP is concentrated in Uttar Pradesh, the AAP will be concentrated in Delhi and the adjoining NCR seats. Outside this "ground zero" they will gain votes like the BSP has been doing in the last 20 years but the number of such votes will not cross the "threshold" to convert into seats big time.

- If the upswing for the AAP, however, continues to gather momentum across middle class and urban areas and this manages additional national swing of 10 per cent votes, it might very well take them within striking distance of eclipsing the Congress. This has more to do with the Congress meltdown in terms of seats across India. However; this certainly is a herculean task given the fact that the AAP wave is largely a middleclass and urban phenomenon, that too mostly in adjoining regions of Delhi NCR. On the other hand, regardless of the downswing across India, the worst ever the Congress fared in terms of vote share still remains approximately 20 per cent. This is its core support base. Almost every fifth Indian will still vote for the Congress in its worst possible hour. This is an extremely important finding because to bounce back in future, this is the core support base that any party counts on. From that perspective, the task of Rahul Gandhi to revive the Congress from scratch seems not that difficult. The seats tally might look depressing for the Congress, but it's in the votes that the future of the party is to be seen. As they say one week is a long time in politics, and we are still 12 weeks away from the polls.