A quick look at the nine Exit Polls featured here may seem like the BJP-led NDA is easily expected to be heading towards 300+ seats, but there’s more to the exit polls when you analyse them carefully.
I have given two averages – one with the NETA APP and one without. The reason is that prediction elections through an APP is yet to be proven in India. Without the NETA APP, the NDA is getting 8 more seats.
- The range (lowest to highest) in the national numbers is 111 seats (low of 242 and high of 253) for the NDA.
- In the case of UPA, the range is 95 seats, with a low of 70 and a high of 165.
- The closest range of 49 seats (low of 89 and high of 138) is in the case of “Others”.
- If you watched the state-by-state projections (or read about them in the papers yesterday), you would have realised that the differences in the projections between different pollsters were very high.
- In the case of UP, while some pollsters gave as low as 7-19 seats to the BSP–SP–RLD mahagathbandhan, some others gave as high as 40-48 seats to them. Huge differences were also seen in the predictions between pollsters in the case of West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. Some pollsters even had BJP getting more seats than Mamata Didi’s AITC or TMC. Is this possible? In the case of Andhra Pradesh, some pollsters showed Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP as winning more seats, while others predicted that Jagan Reddy’s YSRCP would get more seats.
If the actual results (due in about 56-60 hours from now) will be like the Exit Poll predictions, the points of consensus seem to be that:
- Hindu votes seem to have consolidated for the BJP in state after state.
- Narendra Modi will be the Prime Minister of India once again and may not need the support of TRS in Telangana or YSR Congress in Andhra Pradesh to form the NDA 3.0 government.
- The Rahul Gandhi led Indian National Congress will not reach the double digit mark. Will this result in the split of the Congress? Will young leaders call for a proper democratic election for the post of party president? Time will answer these questions, but if the Congress ends up getting less than 70 seats on its own, as many polls have suggested, these things could happen sooner than later.
- Priyanka Gandhi seems to be as big a failure as her elder brother.
- India is going to see an end of Communist parties. CPIM is projected to get less than 4-5 seats and will (PROBABLY) be no longer be recognised as a national party – in order to qualify, a registered party has to win 11 seats in the Lok Sabha from at least 3 different States, or if in a General Election to Lok Sabha or Legislative Assembly, the party polls 6% of votes in four States and in addition it wins 4 Lok Sabha seats, or if a party gets recognition as a State Party in four or more States.
- Arvind Kejriwal’s AAP is finished. It will get only 0-2 seats in this election. To think that this man was projected as a potential PM by the media just 5 years ago…
- Another party to suffer a near-death-knell due to these polls is Lalu Prasad Yadav’s RJD. Will it ever be able to recover?
- The Congress-JDS coalition government is Karnataka is likely to fall, as most polls have predicted a rout for this gathbandhan in the LS polls. It is most likely that BJP will form a new government in this southern state with JDS as a junior partner. It could also be that the state sees a mid-term assembly poll.
- Even the Madhya Pradesh government is likely to be shaky.
What will Modi 2.0 be like? Will he pursue the anti-corruption agenda with greater speed and vigour? Will we see the likes of P. Chidambaram and Robert Vadra go to jail? Whatever be the case, dear citizens, we are in for some interesting times ahead.