New Delhi, Nov 4 (IANS): The ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) looks all set to sweep the forthcoming Assembly elections in Gujarat scheduled to be held in two phases on December 1 and 5, as notified by the Election Commission of India on Thursday.

This was revealed by an exclusive CVoter-ABP Gujarat Opinion Poll to gauge popular perceptions and voting intent of adult citizens in the state with a sample size of 22,807 spread across all the 182 Assembly constituencies in Gujarat using random sampling techniques.

According to the opinion poll, the BJP is projected to win between 131 and 139 seats in the 182-member Gujarat Assembly. In the previous Assembly polls in 2017, the BJP had won 99 seats. The Congress' tally is expected to drop precipitously from 77 seats in 2017 to between 31 and 39 seats this time.

The surprise package is the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) that is projected to win between 7 and 15 seats. As a party, AAP was virtually non-existent in Gujarat in the 2017 elections.

If the projections largely hold good, the BJP will win the Assembly elections even after ruling the state almost continuously since 1995. By the time the next elections are due in 2027, the party would have ruled the state of Gujarat continuously for 32 years.

The only other major state where a party or alliance has dominated electoral politics for longer is West Bengal where the Left Front led by the CPI(M) ruled for 34 consecutive years.

Interestingly, the number of seats projected to be won by the BJP looks set to jump significantly despite a fall in its vote share. Compared to an actual vote share of 49.1 per cent in 2017, the BJP vote share this time is projected to be 45.4 per cent. At the same time, Congress' vote share is projected to slump to 29.1 per cent, giving the BJP a vote share lead of more than 16 per cent.