As voting ends…

With the world’s largest marathon elections for the 18th Lok Sabha, spread over seven phases, ending on Saturday, all eyes are now set on the exit polls, following which the people of the country will look forward to the counting of votes that will start on Tuesday. Several television news channels have already aired their respective exit polls from Saturday evening, with the majority of them predicting a comfortable retention of power by the ruling NDA. Multiple pollsters have also predicted that the NDA would win over 350 seats, giving the Congress-led opposition alliance between 125 and 150. It requires 272 seats for a simple majority. As the numbers began coming out, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that the “opportunistic” opposition bloc had failed to strike a chord with the people of the country. But all exit polls cannot be taken at face value. In 2019, the average of as many as 13 exit polls put the NDA’s combined tally at 306 and that of the opposition UPA’s at 120. That was a clear case of underestimating the NDA’s performance, which finally won 353 seats; the BJP alone won 303. Simultaneously, there was an overestimation of the UPA’s prospects too; in contrast to the average of 120 seats predicted for the Congress-led UPA in 2019, it finally won only 93 seats, out of which the share of the Congress alone stood at just 53. One must keep in mind that exit polls are basically surveys of voters conducted by agencies in order to gauge the results of an election with the objective of forecasting the winner and understanding voter patterns. While they have never always been accurate, they definitely provide a reasonable indication about the outcome of an election. Most exit polls have also claimed that the Modi-led NDA, in totality, is also likely to make ‘huge’ inroads in South India, a region that has so long refused to embrace the BJP with open arms. But, while exit polls are exit polls and can never be anywhere close to what the actual counting of votes will bring out, the people of the country will have to wait for two more days to get the actual picture.