Exit polls: Another pollster predicts mega BJP wave in Bengal & Assam; DMK's win in Tamil Nadu, close fight between UDF & LDF in Kerala

New Delhi: A fresh exit poll by Today's Chanakya on Thursday gave the BJP resounding victories in West Bengal and Assam while the Left stares at the possibility of losing power to the Congress-led UDF in Kerala in a close fight and DMK alliance retaining Tamil Nadu, even as Axis My India announced that it will not be releasing its prediction as 70% of voters they approached refused to respond to them.

The Today's Chanakya polls gave BJP 192 (+/-11) in an Assembly of 294 while ruling Trinamool may have to settle at 100 (+/-11), joining most of the polls, which predicted an edge for the saffron party. However, this exit poll has given the BJP the highest number of seats with a minimum of 181 and a maximum of 203.

Similar to other polls, it gave the DMK-led alliance an edge in Tamil Nadu with 125 (+/-11) seats in an Assembly of 234 MLAs and a majority mark of 118. Like the Axis My India poll, Today's Chanakya put Vijay-led TVK at 63 (+/-11) ahead of the AIADMK 45 (+/-11).

Assam, according to its predictions, is going the BJP way decisively at 102 (+/-9) in a House of 126 MLAs while Congress is at a distant second with 23 (+/-9) seats.

The exit poll has predicted a close contest in Kerala with a slight edge for the UDF but that could fall short of the majority mark of 71. The UDF could get 69 (+/-9) as against LDF's 64 (+/-9). BJP is predicted to win 7 (+/-4).

However, Axis My India, which had earlier said that it would release its exit polls for West Bengal on Thursday evening, said it would not be doing so as they "observed an exceptionally high non-response rate, with approximately 70% of approached voters declining" to participate in the survey.

"While some degree of respondent hesitancy is factored into our sampling models, a refusal rate of this magnitude materially exceeds historical norms and introduces a high degree of non-response bias...We recognise that this decision may disappoint viewers,” it said.

“However, in keeping with our commitment to methodological integrity, transparency, and data credibility, we believe it is more responsible to withhold publication than to present estimates that do not meet our internal thresholds of statistical reliability," it said.

Axis My India's Pradeep Gupta said in a statement that they had deployed a structured field research exercise with a team consisting of 80 trained surveyors covering a sample of over 13,250 respondents.

"Following the completion of Phase 1 polling, I also joined the field teams to independently assess ground conditions and validate survey processes. The fieldwork in West Bengal presented an atypical and statistically significant challenge," he said.

From a methodological standpoint, he said such elevated non-response levels constrain the reliability of vote-share estimation and in a competitive electoral context, the risk of skew arising from selective disclosure and silent voter behaviour becomes disproportionately high, thereby limiting the robustness of any derived projections.

He said his teams travelled over 8,324 kilometres to complete the fieldwork, and prepared to publish the findings but "after a detailed internal review of data quality, response distribution, and statistical confidence levels", they have taken a "considered decision not to release the exit poll estimates for the state".