Will the year-long farmers’ protests against the proposed farm laws (now repealed) have an impact on the outcome of the upcoming elections in Punjab?
Was removing Captain Amarinder Singh as the Chief Minister few months before the polls a masterstroke or a blunder committed by the Congress leadership?
Will the people’s man image help Charanjit Singh Channi come back to power?
Has Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) made enough progress in Punjab to wrest power from the Congress?
Know the answers in the most comprehensive Mood Of Punjab survey by Outlook-Hansa Research
The smell of election campaigning reminds me of petrichor brought by the first drop of rains. They both happen with a certain regularity, always leaving us excited with the prospects of upcoming elections and good monsoons. Seven states will go to polls in 2022 and five of them in the first quarter of the calendar. Today our focus is on the upcoming Punjab elections.
The build up to the Punjab polls has been rather interesting: the party in power, Indian National Congress (INC) deciding to change the chief minister in the last leg of the five-year term, replacing Captain Amarinder Singh with not an obvious choice at that time, the Dalit-Sikh face of the party, Charanjit Singh Channi. Meanwhile, Captain Singh decided to launch his own party, the Punjab Lok Congress (PLC) within a few days of leaving the Congress and immediately aligned with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). In the meantime, Prime Minister announced - on the auspicious day of Guru Nanak Jayanti - repeal of the three farm laws, a contentious issue that saw the farmers agitating for close to a year.
So how did we approach the research design to gauge the “Mood of Punjab” barely three months before the elections? We commissioned the reputed research agency, Hansa Research to conduct a massive survey comprising a sample size of 21,000 plus, covering all 117 constituencies across 22 districts of the state. Since Punjab has a sizeable number of voters from the Sikh and the Hindu communities, as well as the Dalit and OBC castes, weighting of data was done by caste and religion at district levels to have accurate representations of the segments.
This survey aims to answer simple questions like whether the Congress High Command has made a mistake by removing Captain Amarinder Singh at the last minute or how happy people are with Charanjit Singh Channi’s performance in the short period post his taking over as CM. We also checked the real issues that will play out in the upcoming elections, what has specifically worked in favour of the current Chief Minister and which party and candidate the voters of Punjab would like to see coming to power.
I am sure the special issue on the Outlook-Hansa Research Mood of Punjab Survey will provide you enough inputs on how the Punjabi voter is thinking. We also have covered, in this issue, how Punjab has voted in the recent Assembly and Parliament elections since 2007. Read on.
