JOIN USMost exit polls give edge to Nitish-Lalu
A clutch of exit polls on the Bihar elections gave the Grand Alliance led by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar a slight edge, while one pollster bet on rival NDA to get a two-third majority.
Four pollsters – C-Voter, AC Nielsen, CNX and News Nation (TV channel) – gave the JD(U)-RJD-Congress combine the upper hand, while Today’s Chanakya, the only pollster to correctly predict the 2014 Lok Sabha election results, went against the grain to predict 155 seats (+/-11) for BJP-led NDA and Cicero gave a slight edge for the ruling alliance at the Centre. While leaders did not betray any excitement over the exit polls, BJP chief Amit Shah was quick to retweet the prediction of Today’s Chanakya.
On the other hand, RJD chief Lalu Prasad said in Patna that BJP would be decimated to 40 seats in a House of 243 where the Grand Alliance would win 190.
The C-Voter, which conducted the exit poll for Times Now and India TV, predicted 122 seats, which could even touch 132 for the Grand Alliance, while the NDA could settle at 111. This exit poll also predicted that the NDA could win 121, which is one seat less than the majority. “Other parties” could settle for 6-14 seats.
Today’s Chanakya gave the Grand Alliance only 83 seats, the worst for the combine in any of the six exit polls. The JD(U)-led combine’s tally could further go down to 74 in the worst-case scenario while the best-case scenario would be 92 seats, it stated.
CNX, which conducted the exit poll for NewsX and India News, gave 130-140 seats for the Nitish-led combine, while restricting NDA to 90-100 seats. Others, it said, could garner 13-23 seats, which was the highest for “other parties” by any pollster.
AC Nielsen, which conducted the exit poll for ABP Group, gave 130 seats for the Grand Alliance. NDA was at 108 and Others 5.
According to this exit polls, both alliances were evenly poised in the first two phases but the third phase gave Grand Alliance a big edge, which the NDA tried to bridge it in the fourth phase.
However, the fifth phase, too, went to the JD(U) combine. Cicero’s poll for India Today Group said the election was a close contest with the NDA getting 119, with a best-case scenario of 127, and the Grand Alliance at 117, with a best-case scenario of 124. The exit poll by News Nation channel gave the Grand Alliance 123-127 seats and the NDA 112-116.