Barring One, All Exit Polls Way Off the Mark in Haryana & Maha

How many elections will it take for people (including us journalists) to stop trusting the accuracy of exit polls?

(Photo: The Quint)

How many elections will it take for people, including us journalists, to stop trusting the exit polls to be accurate? Once again, almost every exit poll missed the mark in both Haryana and Maharashtra.

Haryana: Every Poll Apart From Axis My India Gets It Wrong

Here is what exit polls had predicted for Haryana:

(Graphic: The Quint)

And here is what actually happened (results + leads at 9:15 pm on counting day):

• BJP: 40
• Congress: 31
• Others: 19

India Today-Axis My India, which announced their exit poll seat projections a day late, one day after voting, proved to be the only agency that got it right.

Apart from them, every single major exit poll got it wrong. Times Now, ABP-CVoter and News18-IPSOS all gave BJP more than 70 seats out of 90, more than a two-thirds majority, but the party failed to secure even the simple majority mark of 45 in the actual results on counting day.

The Congress was projected as either barely reaching double digits or failing to even do that much by the same three exit polls. Republic TV’s exit poll predicted 52-63 for the BJP and a mere 15-19 for the Congress, which also proved to be considerably off the mark.

Congress proved the pollsters wrong by crossing the 30 mark, with a difference of just around 10 seats with the BJP.

Maharashtra: Exit Polls Off the Mark

Here is what exit polls had predicted for Maharashtra:

(Graphic: The Quint)

And here is what actually happened (results + leads at 9:15 pm on counting day):

• BJP-Shiv Sena: 158
• Cong-NCP+: 103
• Others: 27

Times Now, ABP-CVoter, News18-IPSOS and Republic TV all predicted much more than a two-thirds majority for the BJP-Sena alliance. And once again, they were proven wrong, with the alliance exceeding the magic figure by just around 13 seats, more than 50 seats off the mark from what the exit polls projected.

India Today-Axis My India’s exit poll was by far the most accurate in Maharashtra as well, making it a double victory of sorts for the polling agency. The margin of error between their projections and the actual results was just around 10 seats.

Which brings me back to the question: Is it time to stop trusting exit polls? That is, if you haven’t already!