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Tag: polls

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Politics

US presidential polls: Joe Biden circle shrinks as Democrats fear election wipeout – Times of India

WASHINGTON: In the nearly three weeks since President Joe Biden took the debate stage in Atlanta and plunged his reelection campaign into chaos, his closest consultations have been not with his White House chief of staff, his top communications strategist or even the leader of his campaign.Instead, he is relying on members of his family — a tight-knit clan that includes his son, Hunter, and the first lady, Jill Biden — along with a tiny group of loyalists to steer him through a self-created crisis and quell a rising rebellion against his candidacy from within his own party.Biden has not consulted directly with the pollsters on his 500-person campaign team about the state of the race against Donald Trump but has instead relied on Mike Donilon, a longtime friend, former pollster and Biden...
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Polls show Michelle Obama leading Donald Trump, sparking Democratic speculation amid Joe Biden concerns – Times of India

Former First Lady Michelle Obama has emerged as a strong contender who could potentially defeat former President Donald Trump in a hypothetical election match-up. Recent polls indicate that Obama, who has not shown any interest in running for office, leads Trump by a substantial margin of 50% to 39%. This positions her as a powerful alternative for the Democratic Party, especially amid growing concerns over President Joe Biden's re-election prospects.The discussions around Michelle Obama's potential candidacy come at a time when many Democrats are anxious about President Biden's performance. Following a debate where Biden struggled, key figures within the party, including Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Jared Golden, have voiced their apprehensions. Rachel Maddow from MSNBC has eve...
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Amarnath yatra, polls to keep security forces busy in J&K | India News – Times of India

NEW DELHI: Jammu and Kashmir, which witnessed record turnouts in the just-concluded Lok Sabha polls, has a rather busy security calendar in the months ahead. With the Amarnath yatra due to start on June 29 and stretching till Aug 19 and the impending polls at various levels — panchayat, urban bodies and assembly, of which the latter even faces a Sept 30 deadline set by the Supreme Court — the security arrangements involving large-scale deployment of central para-military forces across the UT, are unlikely to see any letup.The back-to-back, high-security events may have to be managed such that the assembly polls in the Union Territory are completed by Sept 30, honouring the SC direction dated Dec 2023. Sources in the security agencies indicated that holding polls while the Amarnath yatra...
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Culture

Opposition | No full stops in INDIA

A viral video of 25-year-old Sanjana Jatav breaking into a dance after winning the Lok Sabha election from Bharatpur in Rajasthan became a shining example of how the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) succeeded in pushing the ruling BJP’s national tally below the 272 majority mark. The wife of a police constable, Sanjana defeated the BJP’s Ramswaroop Koli in the seat reserved for Scheduled Castes, ending the party’s run of two consecutive victories there. She is one of the 19 Congresspersons elected to the lower house of Parliament from SC reserved seats. Her victory is not just about adding numerical strength to Opposition forces, it will also ensure that the brute majority of the ruling party cannot silence them in Parliament. Indeed, the Opposition parties are ...
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Mandate 2024 | Will Naveen make or be history?

Sunset has turned the sky a flaming red, in step with the crimson of the blooming Gulmohar trees that line the route of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s roadshow in the heart of state capital Bhubaneswar on May 20. A gentle breeze brings relief from the humid heat for the mass of supporters that throng either side. Women in elegant Sambalpuris, the intricately-woven handloom saris native to the state, wave green BJD (Biju Janata Dal) flags, the white conch shell symbol of the party shimmering in the centre. Some are even sporting cardboard face masks of his. Three rows of dhol players drum up a percussion storm as women in tribal attire perform the Dalkhai, the popular rhythmic folk dance of harvest season.The drumbeats of history are indeed beating loud and clear for Naveen. By setting ...
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Culture

The politics of reservation

Rahul Gandhi totes a slim little red book on stage these days. It’s the Constitution of India—the coat pocket edition of Eastern Book Company familiar to young lawyers. Holding it up, the Congress leader, who turns 54 exactly 15 days after the Lok Sabha results come out on June 4, vows to protect it. His language is an ingenious mix of the late Kanshi Ram and the Occupy movement—two sources that seem unlikely only at first glance. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, blending gravity of tone with animated emphasis like only he can, mouths his own refrain these days. “I’ll protect the Constitution with my life,” as he said in his india today interview on May 17. Why are the two opposite sides, locked in mortal combat in a hotly contested election, promising the same thing? It’s to do with some...
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Election 2024 | The Muslim factor

Samajwadi Party leader Maria Alam, niece of veteran Congress leader and former Union law minister Salman Khurshid, addressing a gathering on April 29 in Farrukhabad in Uttar Pradesh, urged Muslim voters in India to wage a “vote jihad” against the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government. In an election already riven by a Hindu-Muslim binary, this statement sparked another row, bringing the Muslim voter once again to the centre stage. Source link
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She voters | The silent revolution

It was a tiny sliver—a mere 0.16 percentage points—but it became the biggest story of the 2019 general election. That year, for the first time in India’s parliamentary history, the turnout of women voters (67.18 per cent) exceeded that for men (67.02), reversing the gender gap. It was a small step, but it made Indian women equal arbiters of the nation’s political destiny. And the tide is only rising. This election, there has been a 7.5 per cent increase in the number of registered women voters, to 471 million from 438 million in 2019, higher than the five per cent for men. It will include 8.5 million first-time women voters, or those who have attained voting age. The gender elector ratio, or the number of women per 1,000 men, too, has gone up, to 948 from 926 in the previous election. ...
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What women want

While political parties give them schemes and promises based on their gendered roles, women across the country tell INDIA TODAY what they really expect—jobs, education, development—the same things that men desireISSUE DATE: May 20, 2024 | UPDATED: May 11, 2024 06:18 IST Source link
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Swing States | The Big Battle for Survival

A battle of epic proportions is on in election 2024 even as voting for the 543 seats of the Lok Sabha crosses the midway mark on May 7. And it’s playing out in three theatres of war—Maharashtra, West Bengal and Bihar. Collectively, they may contribute only a fourth to the total parliamentary strength, but the outcome in these three states will have far-reaching consequences for the nation. It will, for instance, determine whether the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) cruises to a third consecutive majority, or huffs and puffs its way across the finish line. It is also a battle of survival for the regional satraps, who pose a formidable challenge to the dominance the BJP is striving for. They are what stands between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his place in history but, if they fa...
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Maharashtra | Who will win the Mahayuddh?

Jamlelya deshbhakta bandhawano, bhaginino aani maatanoâ€æ” The words ring out from a stage in Solapur, the textile town once known as the Manchester of Maharashtra. Rendered in English—“All my patriotic brothers, sisters and mothers gathered here”—it has all the grandiose air of one who has come to bury a Caesar, albeit in a different way. The speaker is a tall, lanky, bespectacled man—rather more bookish-looking than his flamboyant father. Uddhav Thackeray’s chosen form of address too is a departure from what orators from his stable have deployed over the years: the usual Shiv Sena invocation is to ‘Hindus’. It’s not just that Solapur has a significant Muslim population. The adjustment in vocabulary is in sync with the 180-degree turn Maharashtra’s politics has undergone over the past...
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Lok Sabha 2024 | Why Gen V matters

On April 11, just eight days before Indians go to vote in the first phase of the 2024 general election, social media was populated with a video of Prime Minister Narendra Modi interacting with seven top gaming influencers of the country. Recorded in March at his official residence, the video showed the prime minister engaging with the young gamers, whose average age was 25, even telling them how he could use some of their “gaming lingo” in his speeches. On another occasion, on March 7, during the presentation of the newly created National Creators Award for online content creators, Modi traded some friendly banter with some of the country’s biggest social media influencers—Ranveer Allahbadia, Shraddha Jain and Kamiya Jani. Allahbadia and Jani, in fact, have also streamed interviews of ...
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Tamil Nadu | A formidable front

Will the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) again be the third-largest party, behind the BJP and the Congress, in the 18th Lok Sabha? It’s a question that’s being bandied about in Tamil Nadu a lot these days as the state braces to vote in the first phase of the general election on April 19. The ruling DMK faces a different challenge this time, considering that rivals All India Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) and the BJP have forged separate alliances, unlike in 2019, to make it a triangular contest. The Tamil nationalist Naam Thamizhar Katchi (NTK) makes the contest, at least on paper, a quadrangular one. NTK had almost 7 per cent vote share in the 2021 assembly polls, finding favour among the younger voters. The party didn’t win any seats, but proved it could upset outcomes in close f...
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Haryana CM Nayab Singh Saini | Younger legs for the race
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Haryana CM Nayab Singh Saini | Younger legs for the race

The unexpected is to be expected: that’s by now a motto in the BJP’s tactical playbook. But it always leaves a vast pool of possibilities. Where—rather, against whose name—would the roulette’s needle stop? The tall, lanky, bearded figure of Nayab Singh Saini is where it decided to stop on March 12. Soft of manner and speech, and perhaps even of ambition, the 54-year-old MP from Kurukshetra may have been as surprised as Manohar Lal Khattar was back in 2014 when picked as the chief minister of Haryana. The latter had an equally surprising exit clause sprung on him, six months short of a decade in office. Just the previous day, as he walked down the spanking-new Dwarka Expressway with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the 69-year-old Khattar had seemed supremely secure in saddle and stirrup. ...
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Chhattisagarh CM Vishnu Deo Sai | Getting down to brass tacks
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Chhattisagarh CM Vishnu Deo Sai | Getting down to brass tacks

Two days after moving into the official residence earmarked for him—a sprawling colonial-era bungalow in Raipur’s Civil Lines—Chhattisgarh’s fourth chief minister and the first from the tribal community to hold the post, Vishnu Deo Sai, had a packed schedule. On March 9, Union defence minister Rajnath Singh was in the city for a political programme that ran a bit beyond schedule. The CM had committed to visiting an ashram in neighbouring Sonpairi village in the evening; he planned to return by 8.30 pm. After running late, Vishnu Deo shared with his aides that he may not be able to make it, but eventually gave in to the ashram head’s insistence. Vishnu Deo finally left at 9, only to return to the CM House past 11 pm. Source link
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