NEW DELHI: India’s biggest metropolises are eagerly looking forward to the Aam Aadmi Party going national and expect it to make a big splash in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections , but a majority still view Narendra Modi as a better prime ministerial prospect than Arvind Kejriwal with Rahul Gandhi a distant third.That’s the message from an opinion poll across the country’s eight most populous cities — Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune and Ahmedabad — conducted exclusively for TOI by market research agency IPSOS.The survey found that a third of the respondents thought AAP would win between 26 and 50 seats, another 26% felt it could win 51-100 seats, 11% said it would bag more than 100 and 5% even predicted a majority for the party. Put together, that means three-fourths of all those polled believe AAP will win more seats in 2014 than any party, barring what Congress and BJP won in 2009.Given that 44% of those polled said they would vote for an AAP candidate if there was one in their constituency, and another 27% said they might, depending on the candidate, it is not difficult to see why the respondents rate AAP’s electoral prospects so high.As for prime ministerial preferences, 58% picked Modi, 25% were for Kejriwal — despite AAP making it clear he is not in the running — and only 14% thought Rahul Gandhi would make the best PM. In Chennai and Mumbai, Kejriwal was preferred over Modi, and even in Modi’s home turf, Ahmedabad, 31% thought Kejriwal was the best choice.Respondents were divided on which party would be worst hit by AAP doing well. A little less than a third said BJP would be worst hit, about a quarter said Congress would bear the brunt and a similar proportion said both the national parties would suffer equally. Interestingly, in Chennai, where politics is dominated by two regional parties, 44% felt regional parties would be worst hit.What’s driving this bullish reading of AAP’s prospects? The answers to two questions in the survey give us the answer. The first of these shows that 50% feel AAP is not only very different from other parties, it will stay that way and another 24% feel it is forcing others too to modify their politics. A sizeable 26%, however, felt that AAP is different now, but it might find it difficult to sustain this.Asked what they find most appealing about the new party, 40% cited its “sincere efforts” at addressing issues of ordinary people, another 35% said it is full of honest people who would root out corruption and 24% said the fact that it was involving people in decision making was its best aspect.That 44% said AAP would help in at least reducing corruption and another 29% felt it would be able to completely eliminate it, says a lot about how positively the party is currently being viewed in India’s biggest cities.Clearly, the perception about whatever the Delhi government under AAP has done in its brief tenure so far has helped buttress the party’s image. As much as 70% of those polled said they were impressed by its performance so far. That figure was understandably highest, at 83%, in Delhi, but nowhere was it lower than 60%.Asked if the Delhi government’s moves on free water supply and subsidised power tariffs were economically irresponsible, a majority said they weren’t, though 60% in Mumbai did feel these ‘populist’ decisions were irresponsible. Not surprising in that context was the fact that 61% see AAP as good for economic growth while only 27% say it would be bad for growth.If the respondents are so gung-ho about AAP, would they be willing to contribute financially to the party and would they be willing to take out time to campaign for it? The two questions threw up interestingly divergent responses. While 47% said they wouldn’t donate to the party and only 41% said they would, the response to giving time was almost an exact mirror image — 47% said they would give time while 42% said they wouldn’t.The survey has obvious limitations, like any such exercise. It is restricted to a sample of 2,015 people across the eight biggest cities and hence may not reflect the larger national mood accurately. Also, it was restricted to those aged 18 to 45 and older people may perhaps be less bullish on AAP, if earlier surveys in Delhi are anything to go by. Also, this survey was restricted to those in the top layers of society, SEC A and SEC B1. Delhi has shown that AAP’s appeal is much stronger among the relatively less well-off.All these caveats notwithstanding, what’s clear from the poll is that AAP’s performance in Delhi is serving as a springboard to a larger national presence in a timeframe few would have anticipated even a few weeks ago. Just how much larger, remains an open question.