Exit poll predictions
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: May 13, 2014 -

With the curtain on the elections to 543 Lok Sabha seats spreading over 35 days finally down on Monday, only four days are left to see whether India is poised for a regime change when the votes cast to elect a new government at the Centre would be counted on May 16.

And, its time for everyone, including the political parties, candidates and voters, to keep their fingers crossed, hoping for the best.

But all the eyes are now riveted on the prediction of the exit polls, which may or not be true.

After most opinion polls, which were conducted before the voters went to cast their votes to find out to whom they plan to vote for, have shown the BJP-led opposition alliance NDA far ahead of the Congress, various exit poll surveys that were taken right after the voters exited from the polling booth have also been unanimous in projecting the likelihood of the BJP-led NDA alliance coming to power to form the next government at the Centre.

The exit poll conducted by ORG for Times Now has predicted that NDA would get 249 seats while UPA would bag 148 seats and 'others' 146 seats.

The poll conducted by CSDS for CNN-IBN has given NDA between 270 and 282 seats while UPA was projected to get between 92 and 102. The same poll has also projected that BJP alone would get between 230 and 242 seats, while Congress between 72 and 82.

Another poll conducted by ITG-Cicero for Headlines Today has projected that NDA would get 272 (plus-minus 11), UPA would get 115 (plus-minus 5) and 'others' 156 seats.

Moreover, the CVoter survey on India TV has given NDA 289 seats and 101 for UPA and 153 for others while ABP News-Nielson poll has projected a clear majority for NDA with 281 seats while UPA was projected to get 97 and 'Others' with 165 seats.

Interestingly, one of the polls, conducted by Today's Chanakya for News24 channel, has even projected 340 seats for NDA, 70 for UPA and 133 for others.

All these predictions may have surely called for celebrations among the BJP leaders and their supporters across the nation, and the uneasiness caused to the ruling Congress party is evident from the steadfast stand from participating in any debates on exit poll results on TV channels.

It is equally true that predictions made in exit polls could not be relied on entirely.

In fact, in 2009 Lok Sabha elections, exit polls had given Congress 68 seats less than what they had actually got and predicted big win for NDA.

But when the results were out Congress-led UPA got 262 seats whereas BJP-led NDA bagged only 159 seats and BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate LK Advani had to bite the dust to Manmohan Singh who took oath as the Prime Minister for the second time in a row.

So, until the final results are out on May 16, the best bet is to look at these exit poll predictions as just indicative of a trend.

But the hard fact to deny here is that this trend is so indicative of a strong anti-Congress wave across the country like never before.