In what should come as a telling blow for the AAP, the BJP seems to be making significant gains in Delhi at the cost of AAP’s popularity. According to a survey conducted by ABP News-C Voter, if assembly elections were to be held today, the two parties would witness a tight contest with the BJP securing 38 percent vote share and the AAP securing 39 percent. This means that the AAP which had polled 54.3 percent of the total votes in the 2015 assembly elections is going to witness a dip of around 15 percent in its vote share, whereas the BJP’s vote share is going to rise by upto 10 percent. This is a worrying trend for the Kejriwal led party. It shows that the AAP is waning in popularity at an alarming rate.
Trends are even worse for AAP when it comes to the Lok Sabha elections. The survey results show that if the Lok Sabha elections were to take place today, the AAP would secure a meager 25 percent vote share slightly higher than Congress’ 24 percent. The BJP will be the clear victor with a mamoth 40 percent vote share. This shows that when it comes to leadership and popularity, Kejriwal is no match to Prime Minister Modi. That is why when it comes to general elections, Delhi clearly prefers Modi over Kejriwal.
Delhiites seem disenchanted with the Kejriwal government with around 32 percent of the voters stating that the Delhi government is not performing well and that they disagree with the policies of AAP. This shows that there is anti-incumbency against the Kejriwal government which will only grow further when Delhi goes to assembly elections in 2020.
This poll has come when AAP has merely completed just over three years in power. There is still a lot of time before Delhi goes to elections in 2020 and Kejriwal already seems to be done in by massive anti-incumbency. People of Delhi are already disenchanted and dissatisfied with his brand of politics. This trend is only going to pick up from here and one can assume that when Delhi goes to Lok Sabha elections in 2019, the AAP would be defeated by a margin much greater than the one predicted by this survey. Similarly, in 2020, there will not be a tight contest as predicted by this poll but by that time AAP will be out of the race on account of rising anger against its incompetence. 2020 Delhi elections will be a one-sided contest with the BJP emerging as the clear winner even as the AAP and the Congress will be fighting it out for the second spot.
Chief Minister Kejriwal epitomizes misdirected populism and poor governance. In the last three years, Kejriwal has done everything that a chief minister is not expected to do and he has done nothing commendable. His confrontational attitude has not helped either. He has been at the loggerheads with lieutenant governor, Anil Baijal and Prime Minister Modi for no reason. People have realised that Kejriwal only scapegoats other for his poor track record leading to a loss of face for AAP and Kejriwal. The way Kejriwal was exposed during his latest dharna stint at the Lt. Governor’s residence has not helped his cause either. Moreover, the way he has shed the image of his party being an anti-corruption crusader, something that brought him to power in the first place has also not gone down well with the people of Delhi. We can safely assume that the AAP’s phenomenonal rise to power in 2015 was nothing but a failed experiment by Delhi. The AAP is on the way down and is slowly going to become irrelevant in the Indian political landscape.
