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Mrs Indira Gandhi has emerged as the most popular political leader in Tamil Nadu. The Congress(I)-DMK alliance has unquestionably greater support than the AIADMK-Janata alliance. These are some of the findings of a state-wide public opinion survey conducted during the third week of December 1979 by the students of the Statistics Department of the Madras Christian College. These findings are in line with the trends calculated on the basis of two other surveys conducted by the students in January 1978 and January 1979.

More than a hundred students of statistics took part in the survey as part of their practical training in the collection and processing of statistical data. About 1,800 respondents were chosen by random sampling methods from about 400 villages and towns spread all over Tamil Nadu. The data were processed making use of a computer.

The multi-purpose survey had one question on political leaders. Each respondent was asked to indicate against the name of each leader whether the respondent supported the leader strongly, was against him, have a good opinion of him, never heard of him or had no opinion to offer. The respondent was allowed to strongly support only one leader. If the respondent insisted on strongly supporting more than one leader he was reckoned to have a good opinion of both, but not have supported any one leader strongly.

Our Chief Minister Mr M. G. Ramachandran is strongly supported by thirty-three per cent of the people interviewed. This is almost the same as the strong support he had about a year ago. In addition, about twenty per cent have a good opinion of him but almost forty per cent are opposed to him. He gets greater support from young people belonging to the 21-30 age group. Among the landless agricultural labourers, forty-six per cent strongly support him.

Mrs Indira Gandhi has the strong support of thirty-five per cent of the people. This figure has steadily gone up during the last two years. In January 1978, the figure was twenty per cent which rose to twenty-seven per cent in January 1979. In addition to the strong supporters, forty per cent have a good opinion of her and only sixteen per cent are opposed to her. Almost forty percent of the women in the sample strongly support her.

The DMK leader Mr M. Karunanidhi has the strong support of about twenty per cent of the people. This is a little more than the strong support of seventeen per cent which he has had during the last two years. More than forty per cent oppose him.

Mr Morarji Desai has the strong support of four per cent. Ten per cent of the people interviewed have not heard of him.

Less than one per cent strongly support Prime Minister Mr Charan Singh and eighteen per cent have not heard of him.

Since Janata has no base in Tamil Nadu, the AIADMK-Janata alliance is no match for the Congress(I)-DMK alliance. Congress(I) is stronger than AIADMK and the DMK much stronger than Janata. The strong support for AIADMK as well as the DMK parties has remained more or less stable during the last two years. However, the strong support of the Congress(I) has been on a steady increase and in contrast to this, the strong support for the Janata party has gone down. The Congress(l)-DMK alliance is poised for a massive victory over the Janata-AIADMK alliance.