The National Democratic Alliance would retain a comfortable Lok Sabha majority if elections were held now, but the Bharatiya Janata Party would fall short of governing on its own as the Congress registers a substantial recovery, a nationwide voter survey indicates.
The NDA is projected to secure 326 of the 543 Lok Sabha seats with 45 per cent of the vote, comfortably crossing the 272-seat threshold required for a majority. The INDIA opposition alliance is estimated to win 185 seats with a 39 per cent vote share, while parties outside the two principal alliances are projected to take 32 seats on 16 per cent.
The figures mark a notable shift from the January 2026 projection. The NDA’s estimated tally has fallen by 26 seats from 352, suggesting some erosion in the ruling coalition’s advantage while leaving its overall parliamentary position strong. The opposition alliance has gained only modestly as a bloc, despite a sharper improvement for the Congress.
The BJP is projected to win 261 seats with 39 per cent of the vote, 26 fewer than the 287 seats forecast in January. That would leave the party 11 seats short of an outright majority and increase the importance of its coalition partners in sustaining an NDA government.
The Congress is projected at 106 seats and 21 per cent of the national vote, an increase of 26 seats from its January estimate of 80. The gain would take the party above the 100-seat mark and strengthen its position as the principal opposition force, although the wider INDIA alliance would remain well behind the NDA.
The movement also illustrates the complexities of converting vote share into seats under the first-past-the-post electoral system. The NDA and INDIA alliance are separated by only six percentage points in projected vote share, but their estimated seat tallies differ by 141. Regional concentration of support and constituency-level contests can produce large differences in parliamentary representation from comparatively narrower national vote gaps.
The August survey involved 25,184 direct interviews conducted between July 1 and August 25 across states and Lok Sabha constituencies. A further 91,795 interviews gathered through ongoing voter tracking over the preceding six months were incorporated into the assessment, taking the overall body of responses used for the findings beyond 100,000.
The projection would represent an improvement for the BJP compared with its actual performance in the 2024 Lok Sabha election, when it won 240 seats and lost the single-party majority it had secured in the previous two general elections. The NDA won 293 seats in 2024, enabling Narendra Modi to form a third consecutive government with greater dependence on coalition partners. The Congress won 99 seats, while the INDIA grouping secured 234.
The survey points to Uttar Pradesh as one of the more challenging battlegrounds for the ruling alliance. The INDIA bloc is projected to win 41 of the state’s 80 Lok Sabha seats against 38 for the NDA, even though the NDA retains a narrow advantage in projected vote share. Youth unemployment, examination-related controversies and education policy have emerged as politically sensitive issues in the country’s most populous state.
West Bengal offers a more favourable picture for the BJP, with the party projected to improve its position there. Such state-level variations underline the importance of regional contests ahead of the next general election, particularly across the Hindi heartland and states where the BJP is seeking to expand beyond its established electoral bases.
Economic and livelihood concerns remain prominent in voter responses. Unemployment emerged as the country’s leading problem, while respondents also identified inflation, job creation and economic performance among the government’s principal weaknesses. Forty-three per cent said corruption had increased under the Modi government, adding another potential vulnerability to the ruling coalition’s political narrative.
Modi nevertheless continues to command stronger personal ratings than his principal political rivals. His approval rating stands at 58 per cent, although that represents a six-point decline from January. Political stability emerged as one of the NDA government’s strongest perceived achievements, alongside infrastructure development and the construction of the Ram Temple.
