Fake BBC Poll Makes A Comeback, Predicts BJP Win in Rajasthan

A fake poll from “BBC” predicting a win for the BJP in the upcoming Rajasthan elections went viral on social media.

THE CLAIM

A fake opinion poll predicting a win for the ruling BJP in the upcoming Rajasthan elections is doing the rounds on social media. The fake poll has been attributed to the British Broadcasting Company (BBC).

The post gives an estimation of the seats that will be won by the BJP in the Rajasthan elections. The particular post also says, “Narendra Modi has single-handedly rescued Rajasthan for the BJP from the jaws of defeat.”

Click here to view the archived version of the post.

A Twitter handle Rishi Bagree with a large following of right-wing sympathisers shared this post as well on Twitter with numbers changed from November. His tweet got more than 2,000 retweets and 6,000 likes. However, Bagree has not attributed the poll to BBC, and neither mentioned the source of the opinion poll.

Rajasthan opinion poll

June -- Congress 160+, BJP 30
July -- Congress 150 , BJP 40
Aug --. Congress 135 , BJP 50
Oct --- Congress 125 , BJP 65
Nov --- Congress 110, BJP 85
Today--Congress 105, BJP 90

If this will continue On 11 Dec we might see Congress 85, BJP 110

— Rishi Bagree 🇮🇳 (@rishibagree) November 29, 2018

This is not the first time Rishi Bagree has been caught sharing fake news. In the past, Bagree has been called out by BOOM many times. Click here, here and here.

WHAT’S THE FACT?

BOOM spoke to a senior editor at BBC, who called it fake. We were asked to refer to their statement published on The BBC Hindi website.

The article says, “Viral posts like this on social media are fake. BBC has not done any such opinion poll or survey. According to the company’s policy, BBC never does any such survey before the elections.”

This is not the first time fake polls claiming BJP’s win have emerged on social media. During the Karnataka elections earlier this year in April-May, there were many such fake polls circulating on social media. One of the polls even had the same pattern and had an attachment of BBC’s link to it. BOOM had debunked the viral message then.

Not only this, but there were other fake polls that were viral at that time which BOOM had debunked. Click here, here and here to read about those polls.

(This story was originally published in collaboration with BOOM on 2 December, and has been updated at 6:10 pm on 3 December to reflect the changes made by BOOM in the story.)

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