The public mandate from Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir holds some hard lessons for pollsters. The election results have once again raised questions over the reliability of exit polls in the country. As it is, predicting poll outcomes is a tricky business in a nation as diverse as India with multiple factors influencing the voter’s mind.
This time around, all the exit polls have gone horribly wrong in the case of Haryana where they predicted a landslide victory for the Congress. Instead, the BJP sprang a surprise and pulled off a third consecutive victory beating the anti-incumbency factor.
In fact, the saffron party, aided by effective campaigning, smart caste arithmetic and the last-minute gambit of leadership change, bettered its 2019 performance, bagging 48 seats in the 90-member Assembly.
In J&K too, most exit polls predicted a hung assembly but a resurgent National Conference (NC) and its junior ally Congress are set to form the government with a comfortable majority in the 90-member House. Some of the big names in the business of poll prediction have egg on their faces as their projections have missed the mark.
Ethical concerns
There are growing concerns that the survey agencies, who conduct the opinion and exit polls, are often influenced by either ideological bias or financial incentives or both. They play a big role in building narratives that might suit a particular political party. Thus, the scientific validity of poll projections are coming under increasing scrutiny.
Exit polls, by nature, are speculative. They rely on voters’ honesty in revealing who they voted for and why. There is no obligation for voters to disclose their preference, and often, they may choose not to, preserving the secrecy of the ballot. This makes poll projection a tricky affair.
Modern exit polls seem more like a guessing game than a scientific exercise. The influence of money and ideological leanings has led to a manipulation of polling data, where projections are skewed to favour particular political parties. This trend raises serious ethical concerns.
Pollsters often conduct their surveys hastily, collecting data from a limited number of constituencies and ignoring a vast number of undecided voters who make up their minds at the last minute. The rush to deliver results for television broadcasts immediately after the polls close leads to flawed analysis, missing crucial data that could alter the prediction significantly.
Moreover, the Election Commission’s regulations have imposed restrictions on exit polls, mandating that they can only be released after the final phase of voting is completed if elections are held in multiple phases. Despite these measures, the integrity of exit polls remains questionable, as pollsters seem unable or unwilling to provide unbiased assessments.
The Election Commission should consider imposing stricter regulations on exit polls, particularly on issues of transparency and accountability in their methodologies.
History of hits and misses
This was not the time that the poll predictions missed the target. In the Lok Sabha elections held earlier this year, an overwhelming majority of the exit polls, including a clutch of leading agencies, predicted a massive win for the BJP on its own in tune with the party’s “chaar sau paar” target.
However, the results showed a much weakened BJP and a resurgent Opposition. Unlike the 2014 and 2019 polls, the saffron party failed to win a simple majority and ended up with 240 seats. As a result, the NDA 3.0 is now dependent on its allies—especially the Telugu Desam party and Janata Dal (United)—to provide a stable government.
In the 2023 Madhya Pradesh Assembly polls, the exit polls predicted a tight race between the BJP and Congress. But, the BJP swept the elections. In the same year, all eight exit polls predicted Congress victory in Chhattisgarh but the saffron party surprised everyone by emerging victorious.
In the 2021 West Bengal elections, some of the leading national agencies predicted that BJP would unseat the TMC government but in the end it managed to win just 77 seats and the Mamata Banerjee-led party retained power. Similarly, many exit polls predicted victory for the RJD-led coalition in the 2020 Bihar elections but it was the BJP-JD(U) alliance that walked away with the victory.
Most exit polls failed to predict the massive mandate that Congress got in Chhattisgarh in 2018. The pollsters were way off the mark in predicting the outcome of Bihar assembly elections in 2015. Most exit polls said the BJP-led alliance would have a clear edge but the JD (U)-RJD alliance emerged as the winner.
The 2004 Lok Sabha elections proved to be a nightmare for the pollsters. An overwhelming majority of them predicted a second term for the Vajpayee-led NDA government which went to early polls after dissolving the Parliament. The predictions went horribly wrong as the UPA stormed to power on the back of an impactful campaign, promising a better future for Aam Aadmi.
Follow us
