{"id":495157,"date":"2023-12-01T19:34:43","date_gmt":"2023-12-01T14:04:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/?p=495157"},"modified":"2023-12-01T19:47:27","modified_gmt":"2023-12-01T14:17:27","slug":"exit-polls-assembly-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/politics\/exit-polls-assembly-elections\/","title":{"rendered":"5 state elections: Exit poll projections range from a farce to the far-fetched"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>By Neeraj Mishra<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Every year, some states have elections and every year, a farcical drama is played out on television channels, for days adding up to the actual counting hour. Familiar faces create and discuss highly improbable situations, stereotyped characters indulge in violence of words and extravagant exaggeration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is all aimed at creating confusion in the voter&#8217;s mind, infusing satta markets with more punters and general joy at the expense of viewers. This year is no different. India Today thinks the BJP can get 162 seats in Madhya Pradesh bettering its previous tally by more than 50. It does not pause to think why and how this is possible. The perceived anti-incumbency of 20 years has been turned on its head and a Gujarat-like result is possible without a similar communal situation or voter mindset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At the same time, there are three other channels which think it\u2019s a close race giving an average of only 100 seats to the BJP, 16 short of majority. Psephology is now a full time business with at least a dozen big companies that employ innumerable fake scientists. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some of these companies have taken this to the next level like Prashant Kishor. They run full time advisories on election management charging hundreds of crores. They can make or break political careers with their advise \u201cbased on research\u201d leading to denial or offer of party tickets. Clearly, winning is the only thing that matters as stakes are too high and the prize is control over the entire system at the state level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Back to the exit polls though, the song on Chhattisgarh is quite identical in every channel. Every psephologist worth his salt knows that the BJP was so far behind in 2018 at 15 seats compared to the Congress\u2019 70 that to recover and beat it would be next to impossible, so every channel has the Congress ahead. But in a house of 90 to say that BJP will get between 36-46 seats and Congress will get 40-50 seats is a joke at the very least.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It would mean both parties are forming the government and the researcher is not sure so he has played safe. Keeping a two per cent margin in predictions is absolutely unacceptable here, since traditionally the difference between the two parties has been less than 2 per cent, except in 2018. Even a 0.75 per cent difference in votes can lead to a BJP-50 and Congress-38 situation in 2013. So to say, the BJP can get between 36 to 46 seats is absurd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s the difference between losing and forming the government. After having covered more than two dozen elections, one has seen that the safest way to predict results is based on the prevailing mood about three months before the elections are announced. Barring something as drastic as Pulwama, people are unlikely to change their mind at the last moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So to say all along the campaign period that such and such party is improving its position is mostly low conjecture. Another noticeable thing in this elections has been the freebies on offer by sitting governments in all states. Shivraj Singh Chouhan beat them all by announcing he would give Rs 3000 per month to every married woman if voted back to power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He even delivered two installments during the campaign period while the Election Commission did nothing about it, it did stop K. Chandrashekhar Rao from dispensing his pro-farmer cash. So have the labharthis (beneficiaries) then appropriated this round of elections? They certainly have caused a major rift among psephologists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The wide difference in their predictions is perhaps also caused by which set of Labharthi they talked to. Labharthis also tend to aggregate their votes regionally. For instance in famine-ridden Bundelkhand in Madhya Pradesh, Rs 3000 means a lot but not so much in more affluent Malwa-Nimad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Congress\u2019 offer of loan waiver may trump the BJP\u2019s offer of Rs 12000 per annum to every woman over 18 in the Chhattisgarh plains but in the hilly tribal areas, it still rings a bell. Exit poll is an effective salve to pacify nervous candidates and supporters. No one really remembers or credits the channels with anything even if they were spot on. It is only a three-day carnival and should be treated as such. Real life happens on counting day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pollsters run full time advisories on election management charging hundreds of crores. They can make or break political careers with their advice \u201cbased on research\u201d leading to denial or offer of party tickets. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":495159,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"5 state elections: Exit poll projections range from a farce to the far-fetched","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1497,4,125714],"tags":[2624],"yst_prominent_words":[],"ppma_author":[140543],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/d2r2ijn7njrktv.cloudfront.net\/apnlive\/uploads\/2023\/12\/01184744\/BeFunky-design-4.webp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":140543,"user_id":4,"is_guest":0,"slug":"apnnewsdesk","display_name":"APN Live","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/478eacb893eda88aa6ed8d99b005bf58?s=96&r=g"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495157"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=495157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495157\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/495159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=495157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=495157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=495157"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=495157"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=495157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- html is corrupted -->