The gates to various polling booths across Haryana had barely been closed on Saturday for the 2024 assembly elections when various exit polls started scrambling to announce the results of their exit polls.
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The predictions of all the four-five exit polls conducted by various organisations on behalf of different channels, though varying in numbers, pointed in the same general direction as the most dominant perception that the ruling BJP is losing, and the resurgent Congress is staging a comeback by a comfortable margin after staying out of power for the last 10 years.
Unlike the exit polls which failed miserably in the Lok Sabha 2024 elections at a national level, having made predictions which were way off the dominant perception sweeping the country, that the ruling BJP at the Centre is in for major setbacks, the state level exit polls can be seen to be more creditable since these almost ditto reflect the widespread public perception that 10 years of anti-incumbency is going to majorly dent the electoral prospects of the ruling party.
The BJP had apparently itself acknowledged the anti-incumbency factor, along with the backlash of the state and central government’s unpopular handling of the farmers’ as well as wrestlers’ agitations, when it replaced its chief minister for nine-and-a-half year Manohar Lal with then state party president Nayab Singh Saini ahead of the Lok Sabha elections earlier this year.
It was widely believed that the apparent damage control exercise, coming as it did too late in the day, would not help reverse the electoral prospects of the party, and it was proven in the Lok Sabha elections when the party took a five-seat hit from its 10-on-10 performance in the previous elections in 2014 and 2019.
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Coming to the exit polls, though, as mentioned earlier in the write-up, all the exit polls point in the same general direction, we will dwell on what to us looks the most creditable among them – the India Today C-Voter poll.
The poll gives the Congress between 50-58 seats in the 90-member state assembly (in 2019 election it won 31), the ruling BJP 20-28 seats (it won 40 in 2019) and others, including Jannayak Janta Party (JJP), Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), 10-16 seats (in 2019 they were 19, including JJP’s 10).
The BJP has understandably rubbished these polls, with its national spokesperson claiming that its own polls give it 50-plus seats and that it will be forming a government in the state for the third time in a row.
On the other hand, former Congress chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, who dominated the poll scene for the party in Haryana, asserted that the BJP is going, and the Congress is coming back to power with a thumping majority.
For the ultimate truth, however, we’ll have to wait till October 8, when counting will take place along with Jammu and Kashmir.
