Exit Polls

 

 EXIT POLLS

The polling for the general Elections ended yesterday, and today all the print media and social media is full about the news regarding the results of the Exit Polls done by various agency and the reactions of the various political leaders on these Exit Polls. All the exit polls have shown that it is NDA, headed by PM Modi who is going to form the next govt.

The minimum seats which NDA/BJP can win is 277/227 as shown in the exit poll conducted by ABP-Nielsen , max seats which NDA can win is 339 to 365 (av 352) as shown in the exit poll conducted by India Today-Axis  and the max seats which BJP can win is 291 as shown in the exit polls conducted by Today’s Chanakya- News 24.

The minimum seats for UPA is 70 as predicted by Today’s Chanakaya-News 24, and min for Congress is 38 as predicted by India Today-Axis. Similarly maximum for UPA is 132 predicted by Times Now-VMR and for Congress is 87, predicted by  ABP- Nielsen.

As per these various exit polls one thing is for sure that NDA headed by BJP will be forming the govt and UPA headed by Congress can only hope for the biggest opposition group.

Now as usual the leaders from the Congress and other opposition parties have started saying that we do not believe in exit polls, tempering of EVMs . Let us see the reactions of various leaders in this matter

 

Mamta Banerjee- West Bengal CM and Trinamool Congress (TMC) Chief tweeted that she does not trust the exit Polls and that people are being manipulated. She added that game plan is to manipulate or replace thousands of EVMs through this gossip. She appealed to all the opposition parties to be united, strong and bold, and said that they will fight this together.

My personal reaction to this will be- she is baffled, as most of the exit polls show BJP winning more than 10 seats in West Bengal, and this she can not digest, as she has tried every trick to stop BJP’s march in Bengal.

Rahul Gandhi- Right after the poll predictions started coming in , Congress Chief tweeted that from electoral Bonds and EVMs to manipulating the election schedule, NaMo TV, Modi’s army, and now the drama in Kedarnath; the Election Commission’s capitulations before Mr Modi and his gang is obvious to all Indians.

My reaction- his talking always makes no sense, so I will not like to give my reaction.

 

N Chandrababu Naidu- Andhra CM tweeted,  and questioned the exit polls. Time and again exit polls have failed to catch the people’s pulse. Exit polls have proved to be incorrect and far from ground reality in many instances. While undoubtedly TDP govt will be formed in Andhra, and we are confident that non BJP parties will form non BJP govt at centre.

My reaction- it seems Naidu can not believe that even he is going to lose to YSR Congress in both state and parliament polls, as predicted by most of the exit polls.

Shashi Tharoor- The Congress leader said that, In Australia last weekend, 56 different exit polls proved wrong. I believe the exit polls all are wrong. In India many people do not tell pollsters the truth fearing they might be from govt. Will wait till 23rd for the real results.

My reaction- in India exit polls or poll predictions have been taking place from 1980 (started by India today) and most of the time they have proven to be almost correct . Because Congress is losing, so no faith in exit polls. He did not make this type of comment when exit polls predicted that Congress will win state elections in MP, Rajasthan and Chattisgarh, about 6 months back..

Congress leader Milind Deora said that he has always refrained from commenting on exit polls and that in his experience, they are usually inconsistent with the final results.

Yogendra Yadav- Political analyst and Swaraj India President expressed his disappointment on Congress’s failed performance. He further added The Congress must die. If it could not stop the BJP in this election to save the idea of India, then this party has no positive role in Indian history now. Today it represents the single biggest obstacle to creation of an alternative.

My reaction- very strong reaction by him, which is partly true also.

Omar Abdullah of National Conference said that every single exit poll can not be wrong.

My reaction- I will not be surprised after the results NC wants to join NDA.

In my opinion, the biggest  blunder the opposition parties made that they just kept one item in their agenda, and that was by hook or crook Modi should not come again. But they did not offer any thing concrete, if as per them Modi had failed in so many fronts like employment, GST, De monitisation, farmers death, relations with neighbouring countries etc etc, then where was any talks on how they are going to solve all these. They just threw some thing in air like Congress telling we will create 20 lakhs govt jobs by 2020, or their Nyay scheme, on which there was different explanation every 2^nd day.

There have been enough coalition govts in the past where parties of different ideology any how came together to form govt for eg. Janata Party govt in 1977 (lasted 2 years), VP Singh Govt in 1989-90 (lasted 11 months), Chandrashekhar govt in 1990-91 (less than 6 months), Deve Gowda govt in 1996-97 ( less than year), IK Gujral Gov in 1997-98t (less than 1 year). People need a stable govt, and this time there was no unity between opposition parties before polls. Every opposition party was telling  we will talk post polls. This was not a good signal for the general public, if opposition parties had fought the election, with alliance in place before elections with clear indications who will be the PM of the alliance, then result would have been totally different.

So let us wait and watch till 23^rd May, when the results will be out.

 

Awaiting your views/comments/feed backs.

 

Anil Malik

Mumbai, India

20^th May 2019.