Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is best suited to lead the opposition, which mostly comprises INDIA bloc partners, to take on the Modi government on every front, India Today-CVoter Mood of the Nation survey found.

Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav, Aam Aadmi Party national convenor Arvind Kejriwal and Lok Sabha MP Priyanka Gandhi were also among people’s choices, but behind Rahul Gandhi to lead the opposition.

The India Today-Cvoter Mood of the Nation (MOTN) poll was conducted between July 1 and August 14, 2025, surveying 54,788 individuals across all Lok Sabha segments. An additional 1,52,038 interviews from CVoter’s regular tracker data were also analysed. Thus, the opinion of a total of 2,06,826 respondents was considered for this MOTN report.

Rahul Gandhi’s popularity as the leader best suited to lead the opposition’s charge rose to 28.2 per cent since the previous MOTN survey held in February, when the same number was 23.9 per cent.

However, it is a decline of over four percentage points as compared to last August’s survey, which had 32.3 per cent of responders voting for the Rae Bareli MP as the Leader of the Opposition.

Meanwhile, Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee was a distant second with 7.7 per cent of votes, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav was third (6.7 per cent of votes), former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal (6.4 per cent of votes), and Rahul’s sister Priyanka Gandhi (4.4 per cent).

PERFORMANCE AS LEADER OF OPPOSITION

Additionally, Rahul Gandhi’s performance as Leader of the Opposition has seen an upswing in the August 2025 MOTN poll.

The share of respondents rating him “outstanding” has risen from 25 per cent in February to 28 per cent now. His “poor” rating has dropped significantly from 27 per cent to 15 per cent, while 22 per cent call his performance “good” and 16 per cent “average”.

Also, a little over 12 per cent of the people surveyed thought Rahul Gandhi’s performance as the Leader of the Opposition was “very poor”. The number was almost similar in the February MOTN survey.

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