Maharashtra - India Opinion Polls 2014

2009 Elections:

There were speculations much before the Lok Sabha elections about the Congress party’s complete elimination owing to people’s anger due to 26/11 incident, which even led to subsequent departure of Vilas Rao Deshmukh as Chief Minister. However, the incumbent Ashok Chavan government of Congress proved all equations wrong when the Congress party emerged victorious in 17 seats and restricted Shiv Sena and BJP at 11 and 9 seats respectively. Besides, the anti-immigrant campaign of the Raj Thackeray's MNS and its influence in eight seats in the Mumbai region, apart from two in Nashik and Pune, dealt a severe blow to the vote bank of Shiv Sena and BJP. The NCP led by Sharad Pawar contested on 21 seats in this election. However, the party managed to win 8 seats, which is one less than what it previously held. There was a marginal swing in NCP’s vote share.

United Progressive Alliance	SEATS	National Democratic Alliance	SEATS	OTHERS	SEATS
Indian National Congress	17	Bharatiya Janata Party	9	Swabhimani Paksha	1
Nationalist Congress Party	8	Shiv Sena	11	Bahujan Vikas Aaghadi	1
				Independent	1
TOTAL (2009)	25	TOTAL (2009)	20	TOTAL (2009)	3
TOTAL (2004)	22	TOTAL (2004)	25	TOTAL (2004)	1

2014 Predictions

It is important to note that BJP here finished as the third largest party in terms of vote share at 14% while the Congress and NCP at 21% and 15% each. going by the national trend however - called the Namo wave, the Hindu votes would see a consolidation and there would be a tough fight between both the alliances in both Rural and Urban centers. Both AAP and MNS are going to be a big factor in Mumbai and some other urban centers. While the MNS is surely going to eat into the Shiv Sena vote bank, the pact with BJP is going to help the BJP in its seats surely. For AAP the play would completely be in Mumbai with heavyweight candidates like Medha Patkar, Meera Sanyal and Mayank Gandhi in the fray there. The joining of Raju Shetty's and Athavale's parties with NDA would give the BJP's chances a definite boost in Rural Maharashtra. However, if the Left parties - the PWP and CPM throw their weight with the Congress in some constituencies, there might be some swing back in Congress's favor.

This definitely is the most difficult state to predict, given that strong and deep rooted political traditions as well as candidate selection play a huge role at a local level. 

So here, we have gone constituency by constituency and done a prediction for every seat. 

The BJP which had won 9 seats last time and had finished second in another 12 is going to win 80% of the seats contested and get 18 seats here.

The ShivSena, despite the losses owing to MNS is also going to win 14 seats here and increase its tally by 3. 

The Congress and the NCP would win only in 7 seats and 6 seats each, majorly in its pocket Burroughs of Rural Vidarbha. 

The AAP would win in 2 seats in Mumbai and the MNS 1.

So the final tally is expected to be:

Congress:  7

NCP:            6

BJP:           18

ShivSena: 14

AAP:             2

MNS:            1