New Delhi: The Narendra Modi led BJP government is returning to power with a massive majority, says the Times Group online poll that elicited responses from over two lakh respondents between February 11 and 20.

While over 83% respondents preferred the return of Pm Narendra Modi to power, only a meagre 9.2% of the respondents saw a Congress-led coalition government coming to power.

The thumbs up for the BJP actually, as per the poll, turned out to be one for PM Modi. While the BJP pipped the Congress big time for being 2019 favourites, only 4.25% of the respondents saw an NDA government without the PM Modi at the helm. Therefore, the survey once again embellished the popularity of the prime minister.

Rumours had rife that in case of a diminished majority, if the BJP came to power, there could be a change of guard.

In terms of personal popularity with the electorate, PM Modi stood way ahead of the competition for the post of the prime minister. While 83.39% of the respondents preferred PM Modi for the top job once more, Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, who is a self-proclaimed prime challenger to PM Modi stood behind at just the preference of 8.33% of those who took the poll.

Despite the CBI versus Mamata Banherjee episode in Kolkata recently, the West Bengal chief minister remained the preference for PM for just 1.44% of the respondents. Mayawati too found herself on the fringes of  the survey, at .43%.

Interestingly, in a bad news for the mahagathbandhan or the proposed grand alliance of major Opposition parties, only 3.37% of the respondents preferred it to come out winners in the 2019 general elections.

In a clash of personalities, Congress chief Gandhi seems to have suffered since 2014. Majority of the respondents of the Times Group poll, some 63.03%, thought that Gandhi’s popularity since 2014 had actually gone down. Only 31.15% people who took the poll thought that Gandhi’s popularity had seen an upward turn since 2014, the last general elections.

An overwhelming 81.8% of the respondents agreed that the five years of the Modi regime had been either good or very good. Even in this category, those rating the regime as very good was 59.1% while those who rated it just good was lesser, at 22.29% of respondents.

Reflecting what the Modi regime had succeeded in proffering a pro-poor image in the country, more access to facilities for the poor was counted as the Modi regime’s biggest achievement. GST, Swachch Bharat and surgical strikes came a distant second, third and fourth.

Also, as per popular perception, most people who took the poll were unhappy at the dispensation not having been able to achieve significant success on the Ram Temple front. 35.72% people who took the poll thought that the Ram temple was the biggest failure of the Modi government. Job creation remains a strong concern on the minds of the voters, with almost 30% thinking that it came only second to Ram temple as one of the major failures of the government.

Breaking a narrative of sorts, demonetisation does not seem to have bothered the respondents much.