Soon after the Assembly elections were over in Tamil Nadu on Monday, four exit polls predicted a victory for the DMK-Congress alliance and only C-Voter Survey projected a victory for the AIADMK.
With the AIADMK bagging 134 seats out of 232 seats contested, the C-Voter Survey turns out to be correct and all other four exit polls went badly wrong.
C-Voter’s projection was the closest to reality even in 2011 Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu.
The four other exit polls that went horribly wrong in 2016 included a Hindi news channel and Axis-My Nation.
In its survey, the C-Voter had spotted no big anti-incumbency wave in the Tamil Nadu elections, except in Chennai. The only positives for DMK-Congress, the C-Voter predicted, would be in Chennai, This also turned out to be largely true.
While there was near unanimity that Assam will go to the BJP and the TMC Chief Minster Mamata Banerjee will retain power in West Bengal, the pollsters came out with hugely different seat tallies for both the States.
In fact, Times Now went to the extent of projecting hung assembly in case of Assam where as another channel gave the BJP as many as 91 seats in the 126-member Assembly. The same was the case with Bengal as one channel gave her as many 233 seats while the other one brought down her tally 160 plus in 294-member assembly.
India Today-Axis-My India polls gave the saffron alliance 79-93 seats in a House of 126 in Assam. Congress has been projected to get 26-33 while AIUDF headed by Badruddin Ajmal was projected to get 6-10 seats. ‘Others’ can get 1 to 4 seats.
The ABP Ananda poll gave the BJP alliance 81 seats, Congress 33, AIUDF 10 and others 5. Times Now C Voter projected BJP to get 57 seats and Congress 41 while AIUDF and others are set to get 18 and 10 respectively. Today’s Chanakya gave BJP and overwhelming 90 seats against Congress’ 27 and AIUDF 9.
For West Bengal exit results show a clear win for TMC but show wide variations for the left with seats varying from 38 to 110. BJP was projected to get as many as six seats in Bengal.While ABP exit poll gave TMC 178, left 110, Others 5, Axis -My India exit poll predicted BJP 2-6, TMC 233-253, left 38-51 and Others 2-5. India TV- C Voter exit poll for Bengal predicted BJP 2-6, left + 71-79, TMC 163-171, Others 1-5.
The Chanakya exit poll results said TMC would retain power in West Bengal Assembly Election 2016. TMC was projected to win 210 seats, whereas left Front+Congress alliance was said to win in 70 constituencies. Interestingly, BJP was projected to win 14 seats in the State.