The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : DMK front has slight edge over AIADMK: survey

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Apr 22, 2006

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

DMK front has slight edge over AIADMK: survey

Special Correspondent

Survey was conducted from April 5 to 15 among 5,058 respondents

CHENNAI: A pre-election survey conducted by the Visual Communication Department of the School of Media Studies of the Loyola College has revealed that 44.5 per cent of the respondents have decided to vote for the alliance led by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), with 40.1 per cent for the combine headed by the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) and 12.3 per cent for the Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam (DMDK) in the May 8 elections.

Briefing newsmen on the outcome of the opinion poll, Director of the institution S.Rajanayagam said here on Friday that the survey was conducted from April 5 to 15 among 5,058 respondents in 122 Assembly segments.

But the survey also indicated that 43.8 per cent of the respondents felt that the AIADMK-led alliance would be able to win majority of seats while 42.3 per cent were of the view that the DMK-led alliance had better chances of winning. Only 7.2 per cent thought that DMDK would be able to form the Government.

As for voting in favour of individual parties, 38.5 per cent favoured the AIADMK, 36 per cent supported the DMK, 12.3 per cent backed the DMDK and 4.5 per cent preferred the Congress.

Winning chance

The opinion poll revealed that Chief Minister and AIADMK general secretary Jayalalithaa had a better winning chance in Andipatti and DMK president M.Karunanidhi had better prospects in Chepauk. In Vriddachalam the fight was between AIADMK and DMDK, he said.

Factors such as respondents' opinion about the campaign strategy of parties, voting pattern, people's guess on the prospects of alliances, lack of confidence among the pro-DMK voters and lack of wave in favour of any party or alliance came in the way of accurately assessing the number of seats to be garnered by rival alliances, he said.

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