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The electoral battle in Haryana was said to be done and dusted with every exit poll on 21 October predicting a clear win for the Manohar Khattar-led Bharatiya Janata Party in the state.
Three of the polls – by Times Now, ABP-CVoter and News18-Ipsos – even went to the extent of predicting a three-fourth majority for the BJP.
However, polling agency Axis and India Today withheld their exit poll for a day and released their findings on 22 October. They have predicted a hung Assembly in the state with the BJP and Congress’ seat tally roughly in the same range.
What added to the suspense is the fact that Axis My India chief Pradeep Gupta chose not to release his predictions on 21 October and instead decided to go back to the field to verify his data.
Now, the question is: Why has Haryana thrown up such hugely different predictions?
There are a number of ways exit polls can go wrong:
1. The polls get the seat share right but not the vote share, or vice versa.
This is perhaps the most forgivable error for a poll, especially if it roughly gets the vote share right. Conversion to seats is always a complicated exercise and could go wrong.
2. The polls rightly predict who is winning but get the extent of the win completely wrong.
This is the most common mistake polls make. If polls follow a correct methodology and have a representative sample, then it is highly unlikely they would get the drift of the result wrong. Often polls underestimate the extent of a party’s victory. These kind of errors could be seen in most exit polls for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the 2015 Delhi elections and 2018 Chhattisgarh elections.
3. The polls go wrong even on who is winning.
This is the biggest blunder for any exit or opinion poll and could reflect that there was something wrong with its methodology or sampling. This could be seen in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, when most polls predicted an edge for the NDA but in the end the UPA gained a sizable lead.
Similarly, in the 2015 Bihar elections and 2017 Uttar Pradesh elections, many polls predicted a hung assembly but the Mahagathbandhan and BJP respectively won both states comfortably.
To understand why the exit polls in Haryana gave such contrasting results and get a sense of what the eventual results might be, we need to look at the predictions with respect to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and the 2014 Assembly elections.
Projected Change from 2019 Lok Sabha Vote Share
The gap between Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in Haryana has been around 5-6 months, except in 2005, when the Assembly polls were held 10 months after the Lok Sabha polls mainly due to the fact that Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee advanced the 2004 general elections.
All the Assembly polls since 2000 have shown a few clear patterns:
Now, if we look at the vote projections by two of the more reliable polling agencies – CVoter and Axis – and compare them to the parties’ vote share in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, here’s what we find:
While their seat predictions might be completely different, the two polls aren’t very different in their predictions of which way the votes are swinging compared to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
Both polls predict huge losses for BJP in terms of vote share and gains for others, particularly the JJP.
Projected Change from 2014 Assembly Polls
However, the two polls differ on which way votes are swinging compared to the 2014 Assembly polls.
According to the India Today-Axis My India poll, the BJP’s projected losses compared to the Lok Sabha election are due to “tactical voting by Jats, Dalits and Muslims”.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, BJP got the support of almost all communities in Haryana except Muslims.
According to the Lokniti-CSDS survey, its support among Upper Castes and OBCs was above 70 percent. Among Jats and Dalits it was 50 percent and 58 percent respectively.
Its biggest gains compared to 2014 were among these two communities – 39 percentage points among Dalits and 31 points among Jats.
If Axis’ exit poll is correct, Jats and Dalits may have voted for the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections mainly because of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity as well as national security factor after the Balakot strike and they have possibly drifted away from the BJP as it isn’t Modi but CM Manohar Lal Khattar and local candidates who are on the ballot.
The poll also indicates that the Congress has eaten into the INLD’s erstwhile base of Jats and Meo Muslims and also regained many of its own traditional Dalit votes.
The party’s decision to make senior Jat leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda its legislative party leader and senior Dalit leader Kumari Selja its state unit president may have worked well, if the Axis poll results turn out to be true.
Also, the Jat resentment on the reservation issue and Dalit anger on due to rising atrocities as well as the demolition of the Ravidas Temple in Delhi may well have played a role in turning these communities against the BJP.
In addition to the drift of these communities, there might also be the natural shift away from BJP among all communities that is only to be expected between a national and a state election.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)
Published: 23 Oct 2019,05:07 PM IST