A series of images from an ABP News show predicting that the Bahujan Samajwadi Party would win 185 out of 403 seats if elections were held today has gone viral ahead of the upcoming 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections.
Three of the four viral images claim that the predictions were based on an ABP News-Neilsen poll, while the fourth image was a statement made by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy predicting Mayawati's victory.
However, we found that the images were from a 2016 show and the opinion poll was conducted in the run-up to the 2017 Assembly election in UP.
An edited version of the graphic was previously viral, which claimed that the opinion poll predicted a Samajwadi Party victory in 2022.
The graphics carrying Swamy's statement was also an old one. The original statement was published in a 2017 show and was edited to replace "Donald Trump" with current US President "Joe Biden".
CLAIM
The viral images are from an ABP News show. Of the four screenshoots, one was on voting percentage, one on number of seats, one was Subramanian Swamy's statement and the last one made a prediction about Mayawati making a comeback.
Several other Facebook users shared the series of images, while a few shared individual images. The graphic with Swamy's statement was also shared by people on Twitter.
One user said, "चलो चले सरकार बनाए,हाँथी वाला बटन दबाए. जय बसपा तय बसपा. मिशन 2022".
[Translation: Let's go form the government, press the elephant button (BSP's Party Symbol). Hail BSP. Mission 2022]
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
We noticed that the logo of ABP News in the viral images was an old one. ABP News changed its logo in December 2020 for all its channels.
We then conducted a keyword search for "BSP to win 185 seats" and found a link to a tweet posted by ABP News on 16 March 2016.
The poll was conducted in the run-up to the 2017 UP Assembly elections. We found a video report published by ABP News on their official YouTube channel.
At 1:42 mins in the video, we can see the viral graphic predicting 185 seats for BSP. We also found the two other viral images from the show, showing the voting percentage (1:08) and prediction on Mayawati's win (1:55).
2017 ABP News Report Carrying Swamy's Tweet Morphed
We conducted a keyword search for "Subramanian Swamy predicting Mayawati's win" and found news reports from February 2017 when Swamy had tweeted that he thought Mayawati could pull a Donald Trump and win the 2017 UP elections, referring to Trump's victory in the 2016 US Presidential Elections.
However, he later corrected himself and said that the tweet was an error and he wanted to say Namo (PM Modi) will win. ABP News covered the story and we found the screenshot in a video posted on the channel's YouTube channel.
ABP News released the results of a survey conducted on 2022 UP polls by C-Voter and it predicted BJP leading in the state with around 212 - 224 seats. The survey predicted 12-24 seats for BSP.
Earlier, a screenshot of the 2016 ABP News show was previously morphed and shared with a claim that ABP News had predicted a win for SP in 2022.
Evidently, the results of an old opinon poll was shared as ABP News predicting a BSP win in the upcoming 2022 UP Assembly elections.
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