Bobby Jindal, Republican candidate for Congress from the 1st District in Louisiana

Bobby Jindal, Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from the 1st District in Louisiana, is the most popular among those running for office, according to a survey conducted in late March.

The Southern Media & Opinion Research, a Louisiana-based polling company, announced Jindal was a hot favorite among constituents in his district, garnering 65 percent of support as compared to his nearest rival Steve Scalise with 6.2 percent and some 24 percent undecided voters.

The survey results have a margin of error of 5 percent with 400 people polled between March 20 and 22.

The 1st District is conservative and Jindal’s support base seems assured. In the same poll nearly 62 percent of voters said they would elect President George Bush to a second term and only 26.8 percent said they would vote for Senator John Kerry. The interesting thing about the poll was that 47.6 percent of those interviewed said they were registered to vote as Democrats and 41.9 percent said they were registered Republicans. On the “favorable” scale, 53.3 percent of those polled said they found Jindal “very” favorable, while 21 percent said they held him in “some” favor. A majority of those interviewed were women (56.5 percent), and an overwhelming majority (83.5 percent) were White.

Jindal lost his bid for Louisiana Governor last November by a small margin and the U.S. Congressional seat coming vacant just after that as Congressman David Vitter announced his run for the U.S. Senate, could not have come at a more opportune time for Jindal. His earlier gubernatorial campaign gave him an added advantage of name recognition.

However, his own whiz kid record, and his previous state-level appointments and his record as Assistant Secretary of State already put him in the limelight.