<p>None of the exit polls accurately forecast the biggest story of this year’s Assembly polls – the show-stopper performance of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) led by Arvind Kejriwal, who decimated Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit in her home front with a margin of more than 25,000 votes.<br /><br /></p>.<p>While every exit poll successfully predicting the emergence of the AAP as a new political force in Delhi, most of them were unable to gauge the full extent of the public support the party garnered in the polls.<br /><br />The AAP bagged 28 seats, which will make them the principal opposition to the 70-member Delhi Assembly and the lifeline to the state’s government. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) got 31 seats whereas the Congress grabbed only 8 seats.<br /><br />Agencies like C-Voters, AC-Nielson and ORG-Marg predicted 8 to 16 seats for AAP, but did not foresee such overwhelming results. Today’s Chanakya – another agency that conducted the exit polls – claimed it was bang-on target with the Delhi results as it forecast 31 seats for AAP with an error margin of 9 seats.<br /><br />The agencies were, however, right in forecasting the impending saffron wave and the routing of the Congress from Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, leaving aside Chhattishgarh, where the Congress and BJP were in a neck-to-neck fight.<br /><br />Agencies had forecast that Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan would retain the state comfortably with a minimum 128 and maximum 161 seats. <br /><br />The CNN-IBN-CSDS-The Week survey showed BJP’s Vasundhara Raje claiming Rajasthan from Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot with 126-136 seats in the 200-member assembly. It predicted Congress winning between 49 and 57 seats.<br /><br />The C-Voter survey, on the other hand, projected BJP’s return to power in Rajasthan by winning 130 out of the 200 seats. In reality the saffron party bagged more than 160 seats in both states clearly setting up the stage for 2014 Parliament elections.<br /></p>
<p>None of the exit polls accurately forecast the biggest story of this year’s Assembly polls – the show-stopper performance of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) led by Arvind Kejriwal, who decimated Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit in her home front with a margin of more than 25,000 votes.<br /><br /></p>.<p>While every exit poll successfully predicting the emergence of the AAP as a new political force in Delhi, most of them were unable to gauge the full extent of the public support the party garnered in the polls.<br /><br />The AAP bagged 28 seats, which will make them the principal opposition to the 70-member Delhi Assembly and the lifeline to the state’s government. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) got 31 seats whereas the Congress grabbed only 8 seats.<br /><br />Agencies like C-Voters, AC-Nielson and ORG-Marg predicted 8 to 16 seats for AAP, but did not foresee such overwhelming results. Today’s Chanakya – another agency that conducted the exit polls – claimed it was bang-on target with the Delhi results as it forecast 31 seats for AAP with an error margin of 9 seats.<br /><br />The agencies were, however, right in forecasting the impending saffron wave and the routing of the Congress from Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, leaving aside Chhattishgarh, where the Congress and BJP were in a neck-to-neck fight.<br /><br />Agencies had forecast that Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan would retain the state comfortably with a minimum 128 and maximum 161 seats. <br /><br />The CNN-IBN-CSDS-The Week survey showed BJP’s Vasundhara Raje claiming Rajasthan from Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot with 126-136 seats in the 200-member assembly. It predicted Congress winning between 49 and 57 seats.<br /><br />The C-Voter survey, on the other hand, projected BJP’s return to power in Rajasthan by winning 130 out of the 200 seats. In reality the saffron party bagged more than 160 seats in both states clearly setting up the stage for 2014 Parliament elections.<br /></p>
