The Congress will not only return to power in Karnataka but will also end up improving its tally in the 224-member Legislative Assembly, a pre-poll survey conducted by C-Fore predicted.
The survey was conducted between March 1 and 25 and spoke to 22,357 voters across 154 assembly constituencies.
The respondents were spread across 2,368 polling booths covering 326 urban and 977 rural locations. C-Fore said it had a margin of error of 1 percentage point. Sources told us that the Congress itself had commissioned this survey.
In 2013, C-Fore had predicted that the Congress would end up winning 119-120 seats and it ended up with 122.
The Congress will improve its vote share by 9% and end up with 46% of the vote. BJP, the survey said, will have 31% of the vote and JD (S) will have 16%.
The Congress won 122 seats in the 2013 polls and this year, the survey gave 126 seats to the ruling party of the state.
The BJP, too, will improve its tally in the House but at the expense of the JD (S) and not that of the Congress.
The BJP is predicted to win 70 seats this year, compared to 40 in 2013. The JD (S) tally will drop from 40 to 27. ‘Others’ are expected to get only 1 seat and a vote share of 7%.
