The Verdict.

Polls in One Place. Other data as well.

Polls in One Place is assembled by our research director, Tom Smith. I come in at the end and take credit for it. This week we look at polls and vote data from India, South Africa, Mexico, Israel, the U.K., the U.S. and elsewhere.

The headline is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s impressive (projected) victory in India.

---

1. Financial Times:

Narendra Modi is poised to return for a third five-year term as India’s prime minister, according to exit polls published on Saturday that projected a clear victory for his Bharatiya Janata party and its smaller allies.

Polls conducted by six Indian TV stations and agencies all showed the Modi-led National Democratic Alliance winning a comfortable majority of between 353 and 401 seats in India’s 543-seat Lok Sabha, or lower house, and easily beating the opposition INDIA alliance, a coalition of parties including the formerly ruling Indian National Congress.

That leaves Modi with a strong mandate to form the next government, taking him into a second decade as prime minister. “The opportunistic INDI Alliance failed to strike a chord with voters,” Modi said in a series of posts on X on Saturday evening.

In India’s last election in 2019 the NDA won 352 lower house seats, of which the BJP on its own won 303. The Election Commission of India is due to report official results on June 4. (Source: ft.com)

---

2. The New York Times:

The African National Congress lost its political monopoly on South Africa after election results on Saturday showed that with almost all of the votes counted, the party had received only about 40 percent, falling short of winning an absolute majority for the first time since vanquishing Africa’s last white-led regime 30 years ago.

With South Africans facing one of the world’s highest unemployment rates, shortages of electricity and water and rampant crime, the governing party still bested its competitors but fell far short of the nearly 58 percent of the vote it won in the last election, in 2019.

The staggering nosedive for Africa’s oldest liberation movement put one of the continent’s most stable countries and its largest economy onto an uneasy and uncharted course.

The party, which rose to international acclaim on the shoulders of Nelson Mandela, will now have two weeks to cobble together a government by partnering with one or more rival parties that have derided it as corrupt and vowed never to form an alliance with it. (Source: nytimes.com, italics mine)

---

(Source: aljazeera.com)

---

3. The New York Times:

Mexicans will vote on Sunday in an election that is groundbreaking on several fronts: it’s set to be the largest race in the country’s history, it’s already among the most violent in recent memory, and it will likely put a woman in the presidency for the first time ever.

The two main contenders, who have largely split the electorate between them according to polls, are women. The front-runner is Claudia Sheinbaum (CS), a climate scientist representing the ruling party and its party allies. Her closest competitor is Xóchitl Gálvez (XG), a businesswoman on a ticket that includes a collection of opposition parties.

Ms. Sheinbaum has had a double-digit lead in the polls for months, but the opposition has argued those numbers underestimate the true support for their candidate. In an interview, Ms. Gálvez said “there is an anti-system vote,” and if Mexicans turned out in force on Sunday, “we will win.” (Source: nytimes.com)

---

(Source: oraculus.mx)

---

4. Gallup:

The economy is a perennial issue in elections around the world. Last year, people in Mexico felt more optimistic about their improving living standards (73% “getting better”) and local economy (57% “getting better”) than at any time since Gallup began surveying the country annually almost two decades ago.

Mexico’s positive mood is not limited to the economy. In 2023, majorities also approved of their country’s leadership (53%) and had confidence in their national government (61%) -- both record highs.

Like many other countries in Latin America, Mexico has historically had low levels of faith in its electoral integrity. Between 2015 and 2017, confidence in the honesty of Mexico’s elections averaged just 19%. Since then, however, confidence has risen gradually, reaching 44% last year.

While perceptions of the economy, leadership, institutions and the honesty of elections all improved significantly in 2023, one issue that remained unchanged was that of public safety. For much of the past decade, a majority of people have felt unsafe walking alone in their area at night, staying at 54% in 2023. (Source: news.gallup.com)

---