Opinion Polls Projected Party Position
Opinion Polls Pakistan has spent an effort of 4 months to compile opinion polls for the first time in elections history of Pakistan. We released three massive opinion polls projections for the national assembly seats before the Pakistan General Elections 2018. The first survey was done in April 2018 and released at the start of May 2018, the second followed in May 2018 which was released in the first week of June. The third massive opinion polls survey was conducted between 25th June to 10th July 2018, when candidates of most of the constituencies were announced. This survey was different from the first two surveys in a way that there were questions about the candidate in addition to political party, which gave a clearer picture of voting trends.
In this story, we’ll discuss the party position for the national assembly seats according to Opinion Polls Pakistan projections compiled from the data collected in third survey. We have a different story covering the constituency-wise winner projections:
Link: Opinion Polls Constituency-wise Projections
If the question arose in your mind that how do we call the projections, please visit this page for our answer.
Starting with KPK, the province has 39 national assembly seats which have increased from 35 after the new delimitation following the census of 2017. Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf was the highest achiever in 2013 with 17 seats followed by JUI-F, with 6 seats; Pakistan Muslim League (N), which is considered as a strong party in Hazara division, had won 4 seats. Jamat-e-Islami was the winner at 3 seats.
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf also got a big number of provincial assembly seats and formed a coalition government together with JI and AJIP, the later announced merger into PTI in 2015. With five years of government in province, it is now being considered that PTI will either reap the fruits of their good governance or will face the wrath.
According to the opinion polls results, it looks like PTI will gain even more
seats (28) from the province. Additionally, MMA, the alliance of religious parties (JUI-F, JI and others) doesn’t seem to gain much from the efforts of consolidation. PML-N looks to retain its position while surprisingly, Awami National Party, which formed the government in province in 2008, seems to be totally absent from the tally. However, they are close contestants in Peshawar and Mardan and can never be written off.
Coming to the largest province of Pakistan, which is considered as the king maker province because a little over half of national assembly seats are in Punjab so it is numerically impossible for any party to gain majority (137 seats) without winning this province. For the last ten years, PMLN has governed the province with a convincing majority and has a success in infrastructure development to offer to their voters.
Interestingly, the former two leading parties at national level (PMLQ in 2002 and PPP in 2008) were completely washed out of province in their successive elections (PMLQ in 2008 and PPP in 2013) after the government tenure, except for solitary couple of seats. The reasons for this fact were both different and the threat doesn’t seem to exist for PMLN this time because they still seem to have deep roots at the ground level in province, although recent departure of some electables, especially from southern part of Punjab, rings a few bells in the camps of PMLN.
Our latest opinion polls projection suggests that PTI can form in-roads into the backyard of PMLN. It seems that there will be a split in seats between PTI and PMLN, with PMLN getting majority of seats in north and central Punjab while PTI gaining majority in south Punjab, primarily due to the joining of regional stalwarts.
According to survey, partial victory of PTI in north and central Punjab together with the overwhelming majority in south Punjab would get them ahead of PMLN in number’s race of Punjab. Some solitary seats also look to go into PPP’s bag and seat adjustment of PMLQ with PTI seems to yield the former four seats in Punjab. Additionally, Sheikh Rasheed (AML), Jamshed Dasti (PAR) and Ijaz ul Haq (PMLZ) together with 4 independents sum up the Punjab national assembly seats.
Sindh has been the fortress of Pakistan Peoples’ Party for almost half a century now with the urban areas supporting Jamaat e Islami before becoming the stronghold of Muttahidda Qaumi Movement (MQM).
Before these elections, the small parties of interior Sindh, having the vote bank in pockets, have formed an alliance named Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA). GDA, contesting the elections on one electoral symbol of star, can give tough time to PPP in the upcoming elections. Similarly, the disintegration in MQM has resulted in formation of a new political party, Pak Sarzameen Party, focusing on the urban areas of Sindh.
According to survey results, PPP seems to stay the majority party of rural Sindh with GDA gaining some seats with consolidation of anti-PPP vote bank. Whereas, MQM seems to secure most of the seats of urban Sindh (Karachi and Hyderabad) but PSP and PTI may get a piece from the pie of MQM. A couple of candidates fielded in rural Sindh also look strong after their seat adjustment with GDA. Two independents also look in a position to reach the National Assembly of Pakistan.
Now, finally coming to the south-west province of Pakistan, Balochistan, which is largest by area but smallest by population and this is why it has the least number of seats in national assembly.
Balochistan can be divided into two parts based on voting trends over the past decades: the Pushtoon and the Baloch part. In the Pushtoon part of Balochistan, JUI-F (member of MMA alliance) and Pakhtoonkhwa Milli Awami Party (PMAP) have been the dominant parties while National Party (NP), Balochistan National Party (BNP) and Balochistan National Party- Awami (BNP-A) have been the major parties while some tribal leaders have also contested elections in independent capacity. Some tribal leaders have also joined the mainstream parties (PML-N and PPP) from time to time which resulted in temporary presence of these parties in Balochistan assembly as well as representing this area in national assembly.
In the recent times, some local leaders have formed a new party, Balochistan Awami Party, for the representation of Baloch people at the national forum.
Our opinion poll projections for Balochistan suggest that PMAP will gain majority of Pushtoon seats while the Baloch seats will be shared by BAP and Akhtar Mengal’s BNP. The remaining seats will be taken by PPP, MMA and PTI. One seat is projected to go to independent candidate with NP background.
Now coming over to the discussion of complete spectrum comprising four provinces as well as tribal areas (recently merged into KPK) and federal capital Islamabad, PTI seems to become the largest party in national assembly with PMLN and PPP trailing.
But the projections suggest that no party will be able to cross the 137 seats threshold of fifty percent to form the government. This means that two of the three larger parties will have to team-up, at least.
In case of PTI, they can afford to leave the two other larger parties PML-N and PPP but they will have to resort to smaller parties like MQM, MMA, GDA and PMLQ. Citing the recent political scenario, PTI would not want to sit together with either of the other two larger parties but they’d happily coalesce with GDA, PMLQ and AML, with whom they also did pre-elections seat adjustment. They may get some support from the independents as well to cross the threshold number.
In the case of other two parties, PML-N and PPP, they will have to sit together and will still need support from other parties which are likely to be MMA, MQM, QWP and independents.
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