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Indian Election

Exit polls results may be wrong

Eurasia Group says political watchers should exercise caution as 2004, 2014 exit polls failed to accurately predict outcome

Agencies
Exit polls from India's month-long parliamentary elections suggest that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies are set to form the government again. Political consultancy Eurasia Group, however, said that election watchers should exercise some caution around those predictions.
Local Indian media reported that exit polls predicted a clear majority for the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance. It is expected to win nearly or above 300 seats in India's lower house of parliament, or Lokh Sabha as it is known, according to the Economic Times.
"The exit polls released are in line with our belief that Modi's BJP will be the single
largest party, while it will have to rely on allies to form the government" Akhil Bery, South Asia analyst at Eurasia Group, said in a note on Sunday. "However, it is important to recognise that exit polls in India have not had the best history in predicting the elections."
More than 8,000 candidates contested for a total of 543 seats in the elections. The polls spanned over seven phases, which began on April 11 and ended on May 19. To form a government, a party or a coalition needs to win 272 seats. Votes are set to be counted on May 23.
Bery pointed to previous elections where exit polls either completely missed the mark or failed to accurately predict an outcome. In 2004, when the NDA was expected to win between 230 and 275 seats, they ultimately won only 187 seats and were unable to form the government, he said. In the 2014 elections, while exit polls predicted that the NDA would win, only one of them was able to accurately forecast the extent of Modi's victory, according to Bery.
Still, the scale of the NDA's projected seat count would mean that "every exit poll would need to be extremely wrong for a NDA coalition not to return," he added.
In April, before the elections began, opinion polls stated that Modi and his coalition were expected to win by a very slim majority. But some analysts pointed out that exit polls, despite being inaccurate in some cases, have a better track record than opinion polls, reported CNBC online.
OPPOSITION MOCKS EXIT POLLS The exit polls have predicted it is likely the BJP may have made major gains in the eastern states of West Bengal and Odisha.
West Bengal, particularly, had been an important battleground for Modi because it sends 42 elected representatives to the lower house of parliament. Progress in West Bengal was said to help the BJP offset some of the seats it expected to lose in India's most politically important state — Uttar Pradesh.
Opposition parties, however, have dismissed the results from the exit polls. West Bengal's chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, who is also a bitter rival of Modi, said on Twitter that the fight was not over.
Mamata identified three reasons behind Modi's victory prediction. The first reason behind such forecast is to fan a gossip and build confidence among people on BJP's win, she said.
Taking advantage of these two factors Narendra Modi is planning to change the results of Electronic Voting Machine (EVM)," she said.
The second reason she identified is to "shatter the confidence of opposition parties" and the third “to stir up the share market and withdraw money from it".
"If the exit polls predict Modi's win, the share markets will rise up again and people will invest. Modi plans to withdraw the investment money," she alleged.
Congress parliamentarian Shashi Tharoor tweeted his reading of the prediction as something that can also turn out "all wrong".
"I believe the exit polls are all wrong. In Australia last weekend, 56 different exit polls proved wrong. In India many people don't tell pollsters the truth fearing they might be from the Government. Will wait till 23rd for the real results," tweeted
the Congress parliamentarian, who contested for a third term from Kerala's Thiruvananthapuram seat.
Tharoor was referring to Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison winning what was seen as an unwinnable election, cementing his authority over the Liberal Party and giving him the muscle to end a decade of instability that has seen a revolving door of prime ministers, reported NDTV online.
Though opposition leaders have rubbished the exit polls, National Conference chief Omar Abdullah's tweet that did not outright cast doubts on the exit polls is likely to be seen as a harbinger of the actual results, which the Election Commission will announce on Thursday.
"Every single exit poll can't be wrong! Time to switch off the TV, log out of social media & wait to see if the world is still spinning on its axis on the 23rd," Abdullah said.