The Uttar Pradesh electorate has dented the credibility of psephologists as their pre-poll surveys and exit polls on the assembly elections stood far removed from the reality as revealed by the actual poll results on Friday.
Not one exit poll even remotely suggested that the BSP would secure a clear majority in the 403-member state assembly.
Far from that, barring one, most exit polls virtually pointed to an extremely fractured assembly in which cobbling together a majority had appeared to be an unrealistic proposition in view of the political animosities among the leading parties in the race.
The pollsters were not just wrong in not capturing the BSP’s surge. They really were way off the mark in forecasting the party’s lead over other contenders.
Barring the projection by Yogendra Yadav’s CSDS done for CNN-IBN news channel, every other exit poll said the BSP would not cross the 140 mark.
A couple of channels projected the BJP to emerge as number-two with over a hundred seats for the party. That was totally wrong.
The party won just half that number of seats and ended up a poor third in the race. Most projections pegged SP to end up number-three in the race with less than 100 seats. The SP lost the election but ended with 100 seats at number-two.
Most of the polls gave hopes for the Congress of improving its position. The results have, again, belied that projection.
Even in terms of projected vote-shares for different parties, the psephologists did not get it right.
 Psephologists were not forthcoming with an explanation on why they went so horribly wrong.
“It seems UP is too complex a state to accurately capture the mood in sample surveys,” a psephologist said.
Interestingly, another pollster said: “My hunch based on the survey we have done was that the BSP would get up to 180 seats. But we were not confident enough to say so.”
Indeed, confidence is something that psephologists lack.