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Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi remains “by far” the most popular figure in Indian politics, the Pew survey said, releasing the main findings of its latest survey conducted among 2,464 respondents in India on November 16, 2017.
Shri Narendra Modi at 88 percent is 30 points ahead of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi (58%), 31 points ahead of Congress president Sonia Gandhi (57%) and 49 points ahead of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal + (39%), said the survey conducted between February 21 and March 10 this year.
Pew said the public’s “positive assessment” of Shri Modi is buoyed by growing contentment with the Indian economy: more than eight-in-ten say economic conditions are “good”, up 19 percentage points since immediately before the 2014 election.
The share of adults who say the economy is “very good+ ” (30%) has tripled in the past three years, it added. Overall, seven-in-ten Indians are now “satisfied” with the way things are going in the country. This positive assessment of India’s direction has nearly doubled since 2014, Pew said.
According to Pew, at least nine-in-ten Indians in the southern states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Telangana and in the western states of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Chhattisgarh hold a favorable view of the Prime Minister.
The same is true for more than eight-in-ten in the eastern states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha and West Bengal and the northern states of Delhi, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. “Since 2015, Shri Modi’s popularity is relatively unchanged in the north, has risen in the west and the south, and is down slightly in the east,” it said.
“Similarly, despite Prime Minister Modi’s decision last November to abolish high-value bank notes, less than half of the Indian population sees the lack of availability of cash to be a major problem,” it said.