Poll tracker: Modi wave in West India gives BJP the lead, Cong trails

New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has pulled ahead of the Congress following its superlative performance in West and Central India. The Narendra Modi-led party is likely to emerge as the single largest unit after the next Lok Sabha elections as it is expected to sweep Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and score a big win in Maharashtra.

But the surveys of East, South and West/Central India show regional and smaller parties winning the largest number of seats and they could hold the key to the next government formation. 

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Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Bihar and Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala together account for 335 Lok Sabha seats. If we combine the above states, the BJP seems to have the huge lead as per the Lokniti-IBN National Tracker poll in the western and central regions of the country where the Narendra Modi wave is sweeping the political landscape.

Adding up the seat projections of East, South, West/Central India as provided by Chennai Mathematical Institute's Director Professor Rajeeva Karandikar, regional/smaller parties seems to be holding the ace in the Lok Sabha elections as they are likely to win 107-195 seats.

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With Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra going to the BJP, the party is expected to win 90-125 seats from the three regions of the country while the Congress tally is likely to be 50-101. It clearly shows that if Narendra Modi wants to become the PM, the BJP will have to sweep North India.

As expected the BJP is doing extremely well in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra (with its allies Shiva Sena and Republican Party of India (Athvale)) and is a major player in Karnataka. But it has a very small footprint Odisha, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. The party is almost non-existent in Kerala.

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Another national party the Congress is not doing well in most of the states with only Karnataka and Kerala giving it thumbs up. Most of the states have a strong regional party who are likely to play a crucial role in government formation after the next Lok Sabha elections.

For Jharkhand and Assam, both with 14 Lok Sabha MPs each, and Chhattisgarh 11 there is no seat projection due to the small sample size. While the BJP is likely to get 40 per cent of the votes in Jharkhand and 50 per cent in Chhattisgarh to lead its rivals by a huge margin, in Assam it is the Congress which will get 47 per cent of the votes per the Lokniti-IBN National Tracker poll.