Chennai: Some ‘compensation’ for their vote is a common expectation of people from all over the State, cutting across all divisions of caste, religion and political affiliation, in both, a pre-election survey conducted by a social service organization, People’s Studies, in Chennai revealed.
Eighteen researchers and 85 field workers, under the guidance of retired professor S Rajanayagam, undertook the survey across the 39 Lok Sabha constituencies in the State between March 25 and April 1 by meeting 4485 voters, most of whom resented the Election Commission of India’s vehicle checks and other activities aimed at preventing money distribution and saw them as excess.
The survey taken in the initial days of the campaign for the April 19 elections revealed that the DMK enjoyed 41.3 per cent support in the State, followed by AIADMK with 24.2 per cent backing. Of the respondents, 17.1 per cent preferred the BJP and 12.8 per cent the Naam Tamilar Katchi, while 2.2 per cent said that they would vote for none (stamping on NOTA) and 2.4 per cent wanted to vote for other parties.
Based on the results of the survey, which was released on Friday, it was deduced that the DMK might win 28 to 37 constituencies, the AIADMK one to seven and the BJP one to four.
By eliciting the people’s expectations for the 2026 Assembly elections, along with the survey to find the voter preference for the Lok Sabha polls, it was found that Chief Minister M K Stalin was the most preferred candidate for the Chief Minister’s post (30.7 %), followed by Edappadi K Palaniswami (21.7 %), Seeman (15.05 %) Actor Vijay (14.5 %) and K Annamalai (11.3 %).
The questions had been asked by taking into account that actor Vijay, who launched his party, the Tamilaga Vetri Kazhagam, would take the plunge and contest in the 2026 Assembly polls, in which the votes would be cast as follows: DMK 31.8 per cent, AIADMK 21.5 per cent, Naam Tamilar Katchi 16.2 per cent, Tamilaga Vetri Kazhagam 15.2 per cent and BJP 10.1 percent.
The survey that found that 80.5 percent of the respondents also had their preferences for film actors sought to find out the popularity level of the top stars and came up with the finding that Vijay topped the chart with 19.8 percent following. Rajinikanth came next with 12.8 per cent, Ajit 12.6 per cent, Surya at 3.6 per cent, and Kamal with 3.3 per cent.
Another general observation of the surveyors was that the repeated visits of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the State have made no perceptible impact on the voters.
