Odisha Exit Polls: How Accurate Were the Predictions in 2019 Assembly Elections

Check what the prominent exit polls had predicted in the 2019 Odisha Assembly elections

As the polling for the 147-member state Assembly of Odisha concludes on 1 June, different pollsters and news channels will be releasing their exit polls results.

These exit polls are usually seen as an indicator of polling trends before the declaration of actual results. Sometimes, they prove to be in-sync with the final results, but on other occasions, they have ended up being inaccurate.

The results for Odisha's elections will be out on 4 June, so we take a look at the past exit polls and see how accurate did they prove to be.

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Which Exit Poll Got it Right, Who Missed the Mark?

As per the final results of the 2019 Odisha Assembly elections, Naveen Patnaik-led Biju Janata Dal (BJD) formed the state government for the fifth time in a row. BJD won on a majority of 112 seats, while BJP won 23, leaving nine seats for Congress and two for Others.

Let’s see how accurate were the exit polls:

India Today - Axis My India was right in forecasting BJD emerging as the majority party and BJP coming in second place. However, BJD won more seats than predicted in the range of 89-105, while BJP’s seats haul was overestimated. Seats won by Congress and Others occurred in the predicted range.

Sambad-Kanak News was right in predicting BJD as the majority party but  underestimated their haul by giving it a range of 85-95 seats, when actually they won 112 seats. Moreover, they slightly overestimated the number of seats won by both BJP and Congress.

News 18 Odia also got it right with BJD emerging as the single-largest party but underestimated its tally by 27 seats. However, they overestimated seats won by the BJP, Congress and Others. They overestimated Others’ tally by 21 seats, while their share was only two seats.

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Out of the three exit polls we looked at, all of them correctly predicted BJD emerging as the biggest party. However, no exit poll was accurate in predicting the tallies of the contesting parties.