KARACHI: Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is the most popular political leader in Pakistan ahead of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) chairperson Imran Khan, the results of the nationwide Jang Geo News Poll have revealed.

In the survey, conducted last month in collaboration with Gallup Pakistan and Pulse Consultant, 27% of respondents said Khan was their favourite Pakistani politician.

But the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) chief Nawaz Sharif beat the cricketer-turned-politician to the top of the list, with 29% of the people interviewed by Pulse Consultant and 27% of the Gallup Pakistan sample choosing him as their favourite political leader.

Interestingly, a larger percentage of women (33%) chose Nawaz Sharif as their favourite leader as compared to Imran Khan (16%) and Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari (16%), according to the Pulse Consultant poll.

Second line of leadership

But who are the people's favourite leaders in the PTI and PML-N after Khan and Sharif?

A majority of respondents in both surveys (50%) chose Shahbaz Sharif as the most favourite PML-N leader after his brother Nawaz.

The Punjab chief minister beat his brother's daughter, Maryam Nawaz, by a very large margin.

Maryam Nawaz, who recently led a successful by-election campaign in Lahore for her ailing mother and is seen by many as a successor to Nawaz's political throne, received the thumbs up from 10% of the Pulse Consultant respondents and 11% of the Gallup Pakistan sample.

She was tailed closely by former federal interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan (Pulse: 8%, Gallup: 8%) as the third most favourite PML-N leader after Nawaz Sharif.

It was a somewhat closer competition in the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, where vice chairperson Shah Mehmood Qureshi emerged as the most favourite leader after Imran Khan.

Qureshi got the approval of 25% of the Pulse Consultant respondents and 36% of the people interviewed by Gallup Pakistan.

He was followed by Jahangir Tareen Khan, with 15% of the respondents in both surveys voting in his favour.

Ironically, when respondents from across the country were asked by Gallup Pakistan which political leader was their least favourite, Nawaz Sharif was chosen by the highest number of respondents (27%).

Sharif was followed by PPP's Asif Ali Zardari at 24%, and Imran Khan (20%).

You can read more on the findings from the #JangGeoNewsPoll here.

Note from Editor/Disclaimer: The Jang-Geo-News poll is carried out regularly on a national level according to internationally recognised principles of scientific polling. Large media houses across the world carry out these surveys to assess the perception and opinions of the public.

In order to make it more balanced and transparent, the Jang-Geo-News poll was carried out in collaboration with two different research agencies—Gallup Pakistan, one of the renowned survey companies in Pakistan, and Pulse Consultant, one of the fastest growing research agencies in the country.

The results represent public opinion computed on the basis of views expressed by anonymous respondents selected randomly and interviewed face-to-face. Such surveys contain a margin of error, and should not be taken as a basis for casting votes.

The combined sample size of the study was more than 6,000 households. Gallup Pakistan carried out the survey from October 10 to November 1 using an error margin of +-2 to 3% at 95% confidence level, while the parallel research by Pulse Consultant was conducted from Oct 8 to Oct 25 with a margin of error of 1.62% at 95% confidence level.