part1 of the bigger picture

Having watched the second part of the CNN-IBN CSDS opinion poll, a bunch of quick points

0) The poll predicted that UDF will retain more or less the same number of seats (16 or so out of 20) as in 2009 due to a positive Oommen Chandya factor. I personally disagree - even in 2009, opinion polls before the elections, if I remember has predicted 8 for the then ruling LDF and 12 for the UDF .. in the end it went 4 vs 16 .. the tide is usually quite against the ruling party.. and so I think it will be more like 12-8 or even 14-6 in favor of LDF

BJP ? Well, as always, 2 - 3 seats it stands a small chance, tough, but let us see. I would rather not count on it. Karnataka too, it is quite likely that by the poll, it may actually be a 16-20 for BJP, but for now let us count 8

The point is, I  do not fully believe in the opinion polls, yet it is an interesting one to analyze as time pass ! So..

1)  TN was predicted to have 16% vote for BJP .. quite obviously the NaMo factor. If .. IF .. it is actually true thats quite a thing... (part of it may be the effect of Namo rally in Trichy...) . Even more interesting to me is big gain in Orissa where NaMo hasn't yet even had a rally. But the unfortunate part is that this may fizzle out, when people see that there is no critical mass... It will be interesting to see how Namo addresses this in the days to come.. pre-poll alliances with BJD and AIADMK may actually help the alliance sweep these states, but NaMo may actually be thinking of long term growth for the party..  Can his popularity be converted into the long term growth ?

2) The Congress seems to be helped by the pan-India presence again.. In spite of such a terrible UPA-2, local factors may see it actually gain a few seats in some states.. though it is indeed losing heavily elsewhere. will it cross 100 ?

3) In the next 2-3 days, predictions for the rest of the states will be out as well.. it looks like current NDA may end up with 200 plus/minus 20 .. Once again, it may be hardly accurate, but I think the message for BJP will be to work harder. These days there is usually a series of opinion polls.. and they predict a trend. for example for 2013  delhi assembly poll, BJP was initially predicted at third, then second, and then first.. Indeed it did end up first, but did not get the majority that some polls predicted.  It might have been an attempt by some to make some pro-BJP folks feel that "oh looks like BJP will win without me voting..."  and there by causing some bit of complacency.  This time around , with Congress possibly going to ban opinion polls after the elections are declared, let us see how it goes

4) Finally, at least for now it appears that at the National level BJP volunteers need to stay clear of distractions like AAP and focus on its ground work.. It appears that there are non-volunteer BJP supporters to take care of folks like AAP.  If volunteers can indeed reach the 10 crore households it is targetting (which unlike what the media makes out is not at all "aping AAP", but has been the good old RSS type strategy - gruhasamparkaH ) , that will be a game changer ( even Modi's National Vision can go only thus far... door to door campaigning is key)