Bengaluru, May 1 (DC): Hours before Prime Minister Narendra Modi sets foot on the state for an intensive campaign, the third round of the pre-poll survey conducted by the C Fore between April 20 to April 30, spells disappointing news for the BJP, with the agency projecting a majority for the ruling Congress with 118 to 128 seats in Assembly polls scheduled for May 12.

The latest survey states that the third phase pre-election poll conducted by C fore points at the Congress securing majority for another term in office, followed by the BJP with 73 seats, and JD(S) finishing third with 38 seats.

C fore conducted the pre-poll survey in Karnataka based on Systematic random sampling methodology to select respondents for the survey. In all, 6247 voters were interviewed from 61 Assembly constituencies covering all regions with the help of a structured questionnaire. Care was taken to ensure that different castes and communities were represented in the sample in their actual proportion.

The survey has a margin of error of 2 percentage points at 95 percent confidence level, C fore said in a release.

Although the Congress had released a summarised version of survey report through informal channels, the intention of carrying out this survey was revealed by the chief executive of C fore, Premchand Palety, two days ago in an exclusive interview to a Mysuru based news web site that the entity wanted to know where it stands in the backdrop of three private surveys carried out by three prominent survey agencies like Karvy, VMR and Jain-CSDS which had projected a photo finish. C Fore, however, has maintained that the Congress would win comfortable majority on its own.

"Although we are very confident of our survey, we want to be sure about our own data instead of relying on the old one," Mr Palety observed.

He also contended that the approval rating of Chief Minister Siddarmaiah, was higher in all of these three surveys, which actually tallies with the voter share of C Fore whereas the party vote share which these agencies mentioned was very narrow. Therefore, C fore wanted to have a fresh look just to reiterate its stand.