Exit Polls Set to Move Into Oblivion

Bhubaneswar: (Ajoy Kumar Misra) Are exit polls set to move into oblivion? This question is haunting the general public minds after the successive failures of of survey agencies to predict the poll results in the past few years. Barring Chhattisgarh Assembly elections in the recent past, virtually no exit poll has been any close to the exact results. During the Lok Sabha elections in June this year, the exit polls went haywire or rather nowhere close to the exact results leading to resentment among candidates, blaming the electronic voting machines or questioning the credibility of independent statutory institutions like the Election Commission of India.

The Chief Election Commissioner Rajeev Kumar is totally against the exit polls. According to him the exit polls are not conducted in a proper manner as the sample size taken into consideration for predicting the results are accurate. Normally, the exit polls or the clamour among mainstream media to bag good TRPs tend to forecast election results since seven in the morning to satiate the appetite of the general public while in effect the counting of postal ballots kickstarts at 8 ‘o’ clock. It takes time to count the ballots but the mainstream media starts showing the results much before the actual counting takes place. As a result the outcome is contrary to the prediction of the survey agencies.

The forecast of Pradip Gupta of Axis-India, considered prominent among the pollster agencies went haywire during the Lok Sabha elections and distanced himself from predictions during the Haryana and Jammu & Kashmir Assembly polls only joined the panel of guests in television shows. It is understood that his contract with the India Today group has come to an end after the Lok Sabha polls. He had virtually come to tears during a telecvision show after the Lok Sabha elections.

The condition of Yaswant Deshmukh of C-Voter—another prominent survey agency—is no different as also that of Today’s Chanakya, considered very accurate which did not predict the results at all. Deshmukh, had claimed during a television show that it is only Congress which will form the government. It is also doing rounds that Today’s Chanakya was not even contacted by any channel for the predictions. The successive failures of the survey agencies has landed them in a situation where they shall to fold up or be very pragmatic. It is interesting that the Congress doubted the exact results after the Haryana polls as the predictions of survey agencies had given it an edge over the rival BJP.