oppn parties Exit Polls: UP Confuses Pollsters

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  • Uttar Pradesh voter rolls show a 2.4-crore discrepancy. A difference of approximately 2.4 crore names has been reported between the state's panchayat and rural Assembly voter lists. The Election Commission has ordered the two sets of rolls to be matched
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  • Maaya Rajeshwaran reaches WTA-level quarter-final. The 17-year-old Indian defeated Poland's Weronika Falkowska 6-4, 6-3, becoming the first Indian woman since Sania Mirza in 2012 to reach a quarter-final at a WTA Tour-level singles event
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  • The Supreme Court issued notice to the Centre and the Election Commission on a petition challenging Section 16 of the Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners Act, 2023, which grants the CEC and Election Commissioners protection from legal proceedings for acts performed in their official duties. The petition argues that such blanket immunity could leave citizens without an effective remedy for alleged wrongdoing by the Commission
  • The Supreme Court told voters whose names were deleted from Delhi's draft electoral rolls not to be apprehensive about seeking re-enrolment through Form 6, after the Election Commission assured it that such applicants would not be prosecuted merely because their names had appeared in earlier rolls
  • Congress leader Rahul Gandhi opened the party's campaign for the 2027 Punjab Assembly elections with an Insaaf rally in Sangrur, Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann's home district, accusing the AAP government of failing to control drugs, gangster violence and corruption. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge outlined six commitments, including a drug-free Punjab, protection of farmers, employment for young people and action against corruption
  • Rahul Gandhi accused the AAP government of running Punjab through a remote control from Delhi and questioned Bhagwant Mann's ability to tackle drug abuse, making personal allegations about the Chief Minister's conduct during their time together in Parliament
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Exit Polls: UP Confuses Pollsters

By Linus Garg
First publised on 2019-05-20 16:50:11

About the Author

Sunil Garodia Linus tackles things head-on. He takes sides in his analysis and it fits excellently with our editorial policy. No 'maybe's' and 'allegedly' for him, only things in black and white.
How has UP voted? The exit polls are not sure. Either the samples have been improperly drawn or the regions have not been equally represented or the interpolations of the statistics are not consistent. But whatever the reason, the wide variations in the results of different pollsters have thrown an element of surprise regarding the final results.

The ABP News-AC Nielsen poll shows that the NDA will get only 22 seats while the mahagathbandhan of SP-BSP-RLD (MGB) will get 56 seats. At the other end of the scale, the Times Now-VMR poll shows that the NDA will get 58 while the MGB will get only 20. In between, the CVoter poll puts the figures at 38 for NDA and 40 for MGB. This has utterly confused the public and put the methodology used by the pollsters into question.

While exit polls sometimes get it horrendously wrong (like they did in Australia recently), if the trend is same for all polls, one can assume that given a difference of +/- 5%, the results would be close to the polls. But in case of UP, the exit polls have put out widely different figures that do not allow one to form a firm opinion.

The MGB and the Congress have said that people are in for a surprise on the 23rd of May. They have sought to base their opinion on the assumption that they have spotted “silent” voters in the state who do not speak much but are disgusted with the policies of NDA and will vote against it. They say that the BJP will be wiped out in the state.

The BJP, on the other hand, is quite upbeat that it will better its 2014 tally. The party thinks that PM Modi’s image and the events subsequent to the Balakot strikes have raised the party’s image among the voters and they are ready to forget the excesses of Yogi Adityanath to give Modi another chance. The party also seriously thinks that the SP votes have not been fully transferred to the BSP candidates in the constituencies where they got the ticket.

Whatever be the results, one thing is sure. Amit Shah’s and Yogi’s boast of bettering the 2014 tally is not going to happen. The BJP is set to lose quite a few seats to the caste combination cobbled up by the MGB. It is also certain that these losses would have multiplied if the Congress had refrained from fielding candidates in all the 80 constituencies of the state.

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