Exit polls give Congress an edge

NDA will not be far behind, Left set to lose strength in a hung Parliament, say pollsters

All the TV channels projected that the month-long electoral exercise would result in a highly fractured mandate. The surveys, however, also predicted that the Third Front would get more than 100 seats.

According to India TV, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) will win around 195 of the total 543 seats in the LS and its tally may even go up to 227 if Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party (SP), Lalu Prasad’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Ram Vilas Paswan’s Lok Janashakti Party (LJP) supported it.

The survey was conducted by the C-Voter research group for the Hindi news channel and it predicted that the SP, the RJD and the LJP could win altogether 32 seats in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

Prasad and Paswan have been in the UPA since 2004 and Yadav’s party extended support to the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government during the trust-vote over the India-US nuclear deal in July last year.

The Congress could not strike prepoll deals with the three parties due to differences over seat-sharing, but it hopes they all would support its bid to retain power after the elections.

India TV predicted that the BJP-led NDA would get 189 seats while the Third Front would secure 113 seats. It left 14 seats for ‘others’ that include smaller parties and independents.

The CNN-IBN channel gave the UPA 185-205 seats, while the NDA was predicted to get 165-185 seats. The Third Front was projected to get 110-130 seats. The SP, the RJD and the LJP were likely to get 25 to 35 seats together, while the ‘others’ were predicted to get 20-30 seats.

Another survey by the Headlines Today channel predicted that 191 seats would go to the kitty of Congress and its allies, like the National Congress Party in Maharasthra and Meghalaya, Trinamool Congress in West Bengal, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu and National Conference in Jammu and Kashmir. The channel gave 180 seats to the BJP and its allies. The leftist parties, the architects of the Third Front, were projected to get 38 seats — 22 less than the bloc’s tally in 2004.

The NewsX channel predicted that the UPA would get 199 seats against 191 of the NDA while the Third Front would secure 104 and ‘others’ would end up with 48. The Congress alone was expected to get 155 and the BJP 153, it said. The UTVi channel gave the UPA 195 seats and predicted that it would go up to 227 with the SP, the LJP and the RJD joining ranks. The NDA had been given 189 seats and ‘others’ 14. Another survey by the Star TV gave the UPA 199 seats in the Lower House followed by the NDA with 196 seats and the Third Front with 100 and ‘others’ with 48 seats.

The UTVi gave the UPA 195 seats, closely followed by the NDA with 189 seats. The survey by the news channel predicted that the SP, RJD and LJP together would get 32 seats, while the ‘others’ would get 14.

The TV channels aired the results of the poll surveys after the fifth and last of the five phase polling was over on Wednesday. Most of the surveys had been way off the mark in 2004, when the ruling BJP-led NDA had been predicted to retain power.