40% Of Voters Undecided in Uttar Pradesh Vidhan Sabha Election

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Date: February 6, 2017

40% Of Voters Undecided in Uttar Pradesh Vidhan Sabha Election

87% Of Voters Said They Would Use Electricity Generated By The Sun If It Reduced Pollution In Their Community

With just five days until voters begin casting ballots in Uttar Pradesh, 40% of voters remain undecided.

That is the surprising result of a live telephone survey of 2,513 Uttar Pradesh voters conducted by FourthLion Technologies between January 24 and January 31.

28% of UP voters support BJP, 18% support SP, 4% support BSP and 40% are undecided.

The most important issue for UP voters is power cuts (28%), followed by jobs, economy and development (20%), water shortages and clean water (10%), transport and roads (7%), food (4%), currency ban (3%), crime and safety (3%), corruption (2%), sanitation and toilets (2%), schools and education (2%), health, hospitals and medical care (1%) and agriculture and farming (1%).

As many as 87% of UP voters said they would use electricity generated by the sun if it reduced pollution in their community, and 94% said they would use buses or other public transportation if better public transportation were available.

“UP is the most populous state of India, it has a population of over 200 million people. If UP were an independent country, it would be world’s sixth largest country in terms of population. 87 percent of our sample of registered voters in this state said they would use solar energy if it helped reduce pollution. That is not only good news for climate campaigners and organisations, but it also demonstrates a healthy appetite for more solar power projects,” said Samar Halarnkar, Editor, IndiaSpend.

38% of voters said they lose power every day, 54% said they lose power at least once a week, and just 26% said they never lose power.

Uttar Pradesh has about 22.5 percent of India’s installed coal powered capacity. If the installed coal power plants in Singrauli district of Uttar Pradesh, which is at the border and shared with Madhya Pradesh is considered, the number increases to 39.5 percent of India’s total installed coal power capacity. Yet UP suffers frequent power cuts and lack of access to electricity.

46% of urban voters said the air they breathe is polluted compared with 26% of rural voters.

Further analysis and full crosstabs are available here.

About this Survey: FourthLion Technologies conducted this survey in partnership with IndiaSpend.

Methodology: FourthLion Technologies conducted 2,513 live telephone interviews with UP registered voters aged 18 and older from Jan 24–31, 2017. The margin of error is +/- 1.96 percentage points. All surveys were conducted in Hindi, and were distributed geographically throughout UP using random digit dial (RDD) to ensure that every UP telephone number had an equal probability of being contacted for this survey. We applied weights based on age, gender and caste to ensure a representative respondent sample. Respondents are also representative of UP voters on urban/rural and socioeconomic status.

Voter Demographics: Our voter sample was weighted on age, gender and caste to be representative of registered voters in Uttar Pradesh. Our respondents are also representative of UP voters on other demographics such as urban/rural and socioeconomic status.

About FourthLion Technologies: FourthLion Technologies is India’s leading provider of public opinion polling, using our proprietary instaVaani polling platform, and is the creator of India’s leading mobile ordering, payment, rewards and analytics platform (WalkIn). FourthLion has conducted more than 1 million telephonic surveys with Indian voters and has published findings in leading publications such as India Today and Mint. FourthLion has also built the fastest growing loyalty and payment app in India for Café Coffee Day, India’s largest food and beverage retailer. FourthLion works with clients in the retail, media, government, politics and development sectors.

About IndiaSpend: IndiaSpend.org is a data-driven, public-interest journalism nonprofit. It investigates issues that should be — but are often not — part of India’s mainstream public discourse. These include health, education, employment, energy and environment, agriculture and women’s issues.

For further details and information, contact:

Samar Halarnkar, IndiaSpend — Email: samar@indiaspend.org — Phone: +91 9821887451

Naman Pugalia, Fourth Lion — Email: naman@fourthlion.in — Phone: +91 9900083890