At a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modis nett national approval rating is at nearly 66 per cent, believe it or not, face of prime opposition Congress' Rahul Gandhis rating is at a dismal 0.58 per cent.
Across states only 18.63 per cent said they are "very satisfied" with him while 25.06 per cent said they are somewhat satisfied. However, the larger chunk of 43.11 per cent asserted that they are not et all satisfied with the performance of the former Congress president, according to the IANS-C Voter State of the Nation 2020 Survey.
What should worry Congress and its heir apparent the most is his best meet approval rating is close to the worst need approval rating of Narendra Modi. Gandhi got his biggest thumbs up from Tamil Nadu, a state where Modi fared the worst. However, even in his best performance, Gandhi just had 36.12 per cent nett approval from the southern state. Kerala, a state he is elected an MP from, is his second best performance which is 26.11 per cent nett approval. To make sense of numbers, Modi's worst nett approval was 32.15 per cent.
While 38.94 per cent Keralites said they are very satisfied with the way Rahul Gandhi performed, 32.49 per cent of them said they are not at all satisfied.
His third best performance is in Assam which once was a Congress bastion before Himanta Biswa Sarma and Sarbananda Sonowal swept to power. But even in his third best rating, Rahul Gandhi got a mere 15.32 per cent nett approval, half of Modi's worst approval rating which was in Kerala.
In fact, it's only six states or regions where Gandhi's approval ratings were in double digits. All the remaining states were either in single digit or worse, in negative.
State after state where Congress is either ruling or part of the ruling alliance, the respondents don't seem to have a very high opinion of him. For instance, in Congress-ruled Chhtisgarh, Gandhi got a 5.41 per cent nett approval. "Even in Congress-ruled states like Chhattisgarh, forget Modi, Gandhi can't compete with his own Chief Minister, in terms of approvals," says Yashwant Deshmukh of C Voter.
In another Congress ruled state -- Rajasthan, his approval rating is just 1.49 per cent. A 44.22 per cent of the state's respondents told IANS-C Voter they are not at all satisfied. But what should worry the Congress most is Gandhi's image in Bihar, a state that will go to poll later this year is even worse. His nett approval in the state is just 0.86 per cent. State's 45.33 per cent respondents said they are not satisfied with him at all.
But there are as much as 10 states, including Punjab and Maharashtra where his ratings are negative. In Maharashtra its -11.18% while in Punjab its -15 per cent. Even in Madhya Pradesh where his party was in power only few months back, the former Congress President has an approval rating of -2.41 per cent. His worst performance is Himachal Pradesh that gave him a total thumbs down with -22.34 per cent rating.
May 2009 onwards, the IANS-CVoter Tracker has been carried out each and every week, 52 waves in a calendar year, in 11 national languages, across all States in UTs in India, with a target sample size of 3,000 samples each wave. The average response rate is 55 per cent. This survey is based on CATI interviews of adult (18+) respondents across all segments.
"For the analytics we are using our proprietary algorithm to calculate the Provincial and Regional Vote share based on the Split-Voter phenomenon," said C Voter.
