Opinion poll suggest AL itself to bag 168 to 220 seats: JOY

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DHAKA, Dec 13, 2018 (BSS) – Awami League (AL) is set to bag alone 168 to 220 seats in the 300-seat parliament, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s ICT Adviser Sajeeb Wazed Joy said referring to a public opinion poll run by independent research group RDC.

“The Awami League’s margin of victory will be even greater than the 2008 elections,” said Joy in a status posted on his Facebook page disclosing the poll results.

The public opinion poll said in an average AL is to get 66 percent vote to BNP’s 19.9 percent, while some 8.6 percent voters remained undecided.

The Research and Development Center (RDC) conducted the largest opinion poll ever undertaken in Bangladesh from August to October of this year.

RDC also conducted the polls for the mayoral elections for the major cities earlier this year.

The latest study was carried out on 51,000 registered voters in 51 constituencies while minimum 1000 of them were quizzed in each of the constituencies.

The 51 constituencies were selected from a mathematical analysis of all national election results from 1991 to 2008 while “these were the ones that switched parties the most or had the narrowest margins of victory on average”.

“These were the constituencies that our party was most concerned with,” Joy wrote.

He said the study, however, could not poll for candidates as this was prior to nominations but on a party basis “Awami League leads in all 51, with the smallest lead 12.2 percent in Joypurhat-1 and the largest 75 percent in Barishal-4”.

The smallest undecided vote is 2.5 percent in Tangail-3 where the AL lead is 41.5 percent and the largest is 19.8 percent in Shatkhira-3 where the AL lead is 64.7 percent, far above the undecided vote.

The average AL vote is 66 percent to BNP’s 19.9 percent, with an average 8.6 percent undecided and the “AL margin is again far above the undecided vote”.

More importantly, Joy said, there were no constituencies where the BNP is within a 10 percent margin of the AL and only 2 where they are within 20 percent.

“In fact, out of 51 constituencies in 28, or more than half, AL has a margin greater than 50 percent!,” he said.

Joy added: “A margin greater than 10 percent is impossible to overcome by a second party and a margin greater than 20 percent cannot be overcome even with multiple parties and independent candidates”.

These results are weighted for age and gender and that is why the totals are not always 100 percent while the constituency wise margin of error is 3 percent at a 95 percent confidence level.

For the full sample of 51,000 this poll has a margin of error of 0 (zero) percent at a confidence level of 95 percent.

“Based on these polls combined with our statistical analysis of election results from 1991-2008, I am confident that the AL will win somewhere between 168 to 220 seats on its own. The Awami League’s margin of victory will be even greater than the 2008 elections,” said Joy.