HYDERABAD: The exit polls have predicted the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samiti’s win in the Nagarjunasagar Assembly constituency where a by-poll was held after the death of Nomula Narasimhaiah.
The pollsters also predicted that the YSR Congress would retain the Tirupati Lok Sabha seat in the triangular contest between the ruling party, Telugu Desam and the Jana Sena-backed BJP.
There was a fierce battle in Nagarjunasagar where veteran Congress leader K. Jana Reddy contested against young TRS candidate Nomula Bhagat, son of the deceased MLA. Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao oversaw the poll preparations and scores of ministers and other elected representatives camped in Nagarjunasagar for almost two weeks.
“Though the initial mood was in strong favour of the TRS which had a margin of 20 per cent, the situation changed a few days before the polling day, thanks to strong consolidation of Reddy vote in favour of the Congress candidate,” said Shivkeshav Amuka, CEO of Mission Chanakya.
The poll management agency did extensive pre-poll and exit surveys interacting with about one lakh voters. The TRS will win the seat with a 20,000 margin and an 11 per cent vote difference between the TRS and the Congress, it concluded.
According to Mission Chanakya the TRS will get 49.24 per cent vote share against 37.92 of the Congress while the BJP that gave up hope even before the campaign started will end up with 7.8 per cent votes. The TRS will get a majority of the votes in five mandals while Jana Reddy is projected to lead the show in Madugulapally and Tripuraram mandals.
Another agency Aaraa projected 50.48 per cent vote share to Nomula Bhagat against Jana Reddy’s 39.93. The agency projected 6.31 per cent to BJP and 3.28 per cent to others. Aaraa projected a massive lead for the YSR Congress in Tirupati over its nearest rival Telugu Desam. The ruling party is projected to get a vote share of 65.85 per cent and TD a mere 23.1 per cent.
HMR Reserarch Pvt Ltd projected that the TRS candidate will scrape through with 3.3 per cent margin or about 7000 votes. According to the agency, 38 per cent electorate felt good about the government functioning and 26 per cent found the performance average, while 34 per cent voters rated it as bad.
In the exit poll held by the same agency in Tirupati, 41 per cent voters felt Jagan Mohan Reddy’s performance as good and 29 per cent opined it was average and 26 per cent felt the governance was bad. Effective implementation of welfare schemes by the Chief Minister, as expected, played a key role.
A Vizag-based agency Out of the Box however predicted Jana Reddy’s victory with over 7,000-vote margin while it said YSR Congress candidate Dr Gurumurthy will win with a majority of 3.5 lakh votes.
