5.10 pm: Poor voter turnout may play spoiler with pre-poll predictions
Maharashtra's voter turn out has been around 39 precent, but officials are still hoping that voting will pick up in the last hour of voting. At this point, we are seeing a lot more analysis of actual turnout rather than any numbers on exit polls.
The election commission has clearly said that projections cannot be made until half an hour after polling ends. This means that the first projections can only be made post 6.30 pm.
In Maharashtra, apparently the low turnout is giving all the parties massive headaches.
According to Firstpost reporter Vishwas Waghmode:
"Following the low voter turn out in Mumbai, political parties have hit the panic button and are resorting to all sort of measures to get the voters to polling booth. Political parties are even making vehicle arrangement for public to bring them to the polling booth."
The MNS is apparently making arrangements to transport people to voting booths, while the Shiv Sena has asked its cadre to go door to door and ask the people to vote. The BJP is reportedly depending on its RSS network to canvass votes in the slums of Dharavi.
5.00 pm: Will Haryana, Maharashtra 'chale Modi ke saath?'
The voting for the hotly contested elections in Maharashtra and Haryana will end in an hour, and it now remains to be seen whether the exit polls will match up to the pre poll predictions that saw huge wins for the BJP in both Haryana and Maharashtra.
Both Headlines Today (India Today - Cicero)and ABP News (Nielsen) will be running exit polls from 5pm, while CNN-IBN will conduct a poll as of 9pm. Will these confirm the findings of the pre poll projections?
Here is a summary of what the pre-poll surveys say:
Maharashtra:
One opinion poll conducted by Hansa for The Week has predicted 154 seats for the BJP and just 47 for the Sena in Maharashtra.
Another survey conducted by Zee along with Taleem, predicted 110 seats for the BJP and 52 for the Sena. The results, which have put the BJP in the lead, show that the party's plan to resuscitate the 'Modi wave' might be working. However, there is a rider - in the shape of the Shiv Sena.
Representational image: PTI
A report on TOI says, "The opinion poll done by Cicero for the India Today group predicted that the BJP would win between 121 and 145 seats or a range of 12 seats around the 133 mark. That would mean a gain of over 80 seats from the party's 2009 tally of 46. It also suggested its vote share would more than double from 14% five years ago to touch 30%."
On the other hand, the Congress and the NCP are on a serious decline if the opinion polls numbers are to be believed. Whereas 2009 Assembly polls' seat tally shows that the Congress dominated several regions in Maharashtra - Vidarbha (24 of 62 seats), Mumbai (18 of 60), Marathwada (18 of 46) - the NCP had its own share of seat glory in Western Maharashtra (20 of 58), Northern Maharashtra (13 of 47) and Konkan (5 of 15).
However, the Cicero exit polls show that vote share of BJP has gone up dramatically, hinting at a sharp increase in the number of seats. Marathwada, a Congress stronghold has seen BJP's vote share rise to 40 percent in the predictions from the 14 percent it had in 2009. Northern Maharashtra, which last year's seat count shows, was a NCP stronghold has also seen a rise in the vote share for BJP. The part has been predicted to get 34 percent, up from the 13.4 percent last year.
In 2009, the BJP had just 11 percent of the votes in Mumbai region, the predictions show that it might be up to 23 percent this time around.
BJP needs 145 seats for an absolute majority, in order to make sure the party doesn't have to seek post-poll alliances. At this moment, the possibility of alliances seem bleak for the BJP unless the Sena decides to swallow a bitter pill, gives up its chief ministerial ambitions and walks back into a post-poll alliance.
While parties are making their own calculations, most psephologists have been wary of predicting results in the state's polls, implying that the parties' own math might go very wrong when the results are revealed. While all the parties have their strongholds, they have mostly acted together in the past few elections making it very difficult to predict votes.
Haryana:
The IndiaTV-C Voter poll tracker released last week predicted that the BJP will emerge with 33 seats as the single largest party.
Currently jailed Om Prakash Chautala's INLD is projected to win 28 seats while the Congress is expected to win only 16 of the 90 seats. The alliance of Haryana Janhit Congress-Haryana Jan Chetna Party may win about 9 seats, the survey states.
Another survey, this one conducted by Nielsen for ABP News, has predicted that the BJP will win 36 of the 90 setas, while the INLD could walk away with 33. The Congress is expected to win only 15 of the seats, while the HJC and Independents will win about three seats each.
But what came in for some form of relief for the Congress, was the choice of Bhupinder Singh Hooda as the most preferred Chief Minister.
Forty five percent of the respondents that took the ABP-Nielsen survey gave Hooda a ‘good’ or ‘very good’ as CM of the state. Moreover, 29 percent of the them prefered Hooda as a suitable chief minister followed by BJP's Capt. Abhimanyu Singh (14 percent) and Rao Inderjeet Singh (13 percent). Almost half of the respondents (43 percent)said their lives had improved over the last five years.
A survey conducted by local Haryana channel Total TV chose to play safe giving parties a winning range. According to their survey, BJP will win 32-37 seats, INLD 26-31 seats, the Congress will win 15-20 seats; HJC is projected to win 2 - 5 seats, while others and independents are expected to win between 2 to 5 seats.
No comments:
Post a Comment