Asia Poll: Survey of Indian Public Opinion 2011
Sonia most unpopular leader ever”
Asia Poll: Survey of Indian Public Opinion 2011
Asia Poll, which is the Asian subsidiary of the largest polling organisation in the world, has conducted an extensive survey of over 60,000 Indians across the sub-continent on their opinions of political parties and leaders and their voting intentions in view of the serious cases of corruption against senior politicians.
Summary of findings
Unsurprisingly, Sonia Gandhi came out as the most unpopular politician since independence with only 2% of the population considering her suitable to lead the country. The main reason given by the public was that she was the major cause of corruption in India (90%). On a secondary question, 70% attributed her unpopularity to her foreign nationality and 60% to her being a Christian. Qualitative findings from focus groups found that many believe Sonia Gandhi is becoming a foreign dictator in India.
The Congress Party itself did not feature as badly with support from 18% of the sample compared with 40% for the BJP.
Some of the key survey findings are given in the following tables;
Politicians people think have the best leadership qualities to lead the country
Possible Leaders
% of sample
Sonia Gandhi
2%
PM Manmahon Singh
7%
Pranab Mukherjee
10%
Sharad Pawar
14%
Arun Jaitely
15%
Sushama Swaraj
20%
Narendra Modi
22%
Don’t know
20%
Whe questions were asked about Rahul Gandhi and Prijanka Gandhi, the outcome was equally negative with only 4% thinking Rahul Gandhi would make good leader and less that 1% preferring Prijanka.
Political party rankings:
%
BJP
40
Congress Party
18
CPIM
10
Others
32
Urban/Rural split: Sonia Gandhi was only popular among Christians in the survey, 70% of whom stated they would vote for her regardless of Party affiliations. Most educated urban Indians were strongly against the re-election of Sonia Gandhi as Congress leader or any members of the Gandhi family (69%) as were rural Hindus (82%) as there was a strong view these were foreigners subverting India’s independence and encouraging Christian conversions and were the root of all corruption scandals in India.
Another strongly expressed view was that Sonia Gandhi has packed regional government with her Christian supporters and the names of prominent Christian Ministers of State were frequently mentioned by the polled population.
Full details of the poll are available on the Asian Poll website www.asianpoll.com
