While the ultimate assessment of a government by the citizens is through the proverbial ballot box (now the voting machine), there are a few clues that tell us in advance what the voter is thinking of the incumbent government. Two such clues are voter satisfaction with the government and willingness to have the incumbent re-elected. Do voters want this government to be back?
A straightforward answer is that at the time of this pre-poll, a majority of respondents were willing to ‘give another chance’ to the Modi government. For a government seeking a third term, this is an important achievement. However, this willingness to re-elect is somewhat constrained by the fact that there is an equally substantial proportion of the respondents who are not willing to concede another chance to this government. As against 44% who want this government to be re-elected, 39% do not want the government to be re-elected. This gap being rather narrow, the cushion for the BJP is somewhat precarious. Should a chunk of those who are endorsing re-election at the present juncture move away or lose their enthusiasm to re-elect the BJP, that could have adverse consequences for the BJP.
Table 1 puts the present finding in perspective by reporting similar sentiments for different governments of the past two decades. Barring the enigmatic discrepancy between willingness to re-elect and the actual outcome in 2004, for other elections, we find that a robust willingness or a firm unwillingness correspond neatly with the outcome of the election. It remains to be observed if the Modi government too follows this pattern.
