Exit polls: Clear victories + one very close call
The TLDR: The exit poll results are finally in, and they will cause sleepless nights in Bengal—where the predictions range wildly from one extreme to another. BJP can likely write off Kerala and Tamil Nadu, while Congress is holding on to the very slim hope of Assam.
Exit polls: A few cautions
Exit polls are conducted when people exit the poll booth after casting their vote. In theory, they should be more accurate than opinion polls—which measure a person’s intent to vote, and not actual voting behaviour. Sadly, this is not true. Exit polls have been wildly off-the-mark around the world—and have a particularly dubious record in India. Some examples:
- Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 defied all the exit polls—and produced the biggest shocker in recent US election history.
- The biggest Indian debacle: The 2004 general election polls which predicted the triumphal reelection of PM Vajpayee.
- Also off-the-mark: The 2009 national polls which predicted a close fight for Congress-led UPA—which won comfortably in the end.
- Most recent failure: The 2020 Bihar state elections. Polls predicted a landslide for the mahagathbandhan of Congress, RJD etc, but the NDA went on to win the gaddi.
The reasons for failure: are complex. Sometimes, in the case of a controversial candidate—as with the case of Trump—people just lie about who they’ve voted for. In India, the problems often lie in the sample—which may not fully represent a highly diverse and complex voter base:
“Estimating the vote share is not an easy task... given various diversities in India — diversity of location, caste, religion, language, different levels of educational attainment, different levels of economic class — and all of these have a bearing on voting behaviour. Over- or under-representation of any of these diverse sections of voters can affect the accuracy of vote share estimates.”
Also an issue: Political biases of polling agencies and sloppy data collection and analysis.
In sum: We advise you to take the results below with a hefty serving of salt.
Whither goes Bengal?
It was a long and nasty battle. And the actual results may offer little reprieve from the ugliness if the victory margins are narrow. Reminder: A party/alliance needs 148 seats to form the government. Here’s what the polls say:
One: Six of the ten exit polls predict a win for Trinamool. Three forecast a BJP victory, while the last is betting on a near tie.
Two: All the exit polls predict the BJP will cross the 100-seat mark. The most optimistic are Jan Ki Baat and India TV’s People’s Pulse, which give BJP a comfortable margin of 173-192 seats with Trinamool trailing at 64-88 seats. Big point to remember: The BJP only scored three seats in the 2016 assembly elections.
Three: Even the six surveys that predict a Trinamool victory expect BJP to hold on to the vote share gains it made in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections—when it won 18 seats. So whether it forms the government or not, this is poised to be a big win for the saffron party. It is now a powerful political force in Bengal. And Mamata Banerjee appears to have done little to beat it back.
Four: The Times of India poll of polls—which aggregates nine exit polls—predicts a hung legislature: 141 for Trinamool, 138 for BJP, and 13 for the Congress/Left alliance. To which we say: eeks!
Point to note: The wide variations are explained by one factor:
“An exit poll analyst said the variance in the predictions owed primarily to differences among the pollsters in their estimations of the extent of religious polarisation among the voters. ‘If one assumes that the surveys have caught the general drift, the narrowness of the gap between the two main contenders suggests that polarisation wasn’t as pervasive as the BJP would have liked,’ he added.”
Whither goes South India?
According to the polls, Puducherry is fated to be the only BJP win in the South. Both Tamil Nadu and Kerala are poised to offer a decisive snub to the party and its allies.
Tamil Nadu: All polls predict a huge comeback for the MK Stalin-led DMK. The most optimistic predict 175-195 seats for DMK, with BJP-ally AIADMK trailing far behind with 58-68 seats. Only two polls predict a handful of seats for Kamal Haasan’s Makkal Needhi Maiam. The NDTV poll of polls projects the DMK alliance to win 160 seats, and 66 seats for the AIADMK alliance. Point to remember: BJP scored a big fat duck in the past Assembly elections. And there are no signs that it will improve on that record.
Kerala: Pinarayi Vijayan is expected to comfortably hold on to the CM seat—marking the first time that a ruling party has been returned to power since 1977. Also predicted: an electoral bloodbath for Congress. According to one leading poll, Vijayan’s Left Democratic Front will get 104-120 seats while Congress shrinks to 20-36 seats—down from their existing 42 seats. To be fair, other polls see LDF returning but with a reduced majority.
Puducherry: The ‘resort politics’ of the BJP helped topple Congress government in this Union Territory—which was recently placed under president’s rule. And the election is expected to seal that outcome. The Times of India poll of polls gives the NDA 21 seats to the UPA’s 9. Some predict that the Congress tally will be as low as 1-2 seats.
As for Assam…
The election is likely to be close, but the BJP is expected to prevail. This will be a big setback for Congress which lost the state to the NDA in 2016—and was hoping to win it back. The bigger headache for BJP will arrive post-election when Congress defector Himanta Biswa Sarma stakes his claim to the CM gaddi—which is likely to be fiercely contested by current CM Sarbananda Sonowal.
The bottomline: The actual results may well be different, but the overall trend is clear: the BJP has profited most in places where its polarisation politics have found traction. The Congress has once again lost ground across the board. And strong regional leaders continue to hold sway—if a little less so in Bengal.
Reading list
The Hindu has the most concise summary of the exit polls—and of the results in Tamil Nadu. Times of India has a handy dashboard for different states—so you can toggle between various polls and its poll of polls. The Telegraph parses the Bengal results. Indian Express has a good read on the strengths and limitations of exit polls.