Opinion | How Did Exit Polls Fail To Capture Ground Reality? A Pollster Decodes

At first glance, it would seem natural to describe the 2024 election verdict as a huge setback for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), or as a reminder that nobody is invincible in Indian politics. BJP leaders had for long been claiming that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) would cross 400 seats this election. Even exit polls gave the NDA at least 350. The plunge from those heights to less than 300 for the NDA is indeed a setback. The more striking thing in this election is that the BJP has failed to secure a majority on its own. For the first time, Narendra Modi will have to contend with allies who will demand their pound of flesh. It's no secret that the two big NDA collaborators, the Nitish Kumar-led Janata Dal (United) (JD-U) and the Chandrababu Naidu-led Telugu Desam Party (TDP), have a history of flitting in and out of the bloc. 

Three Theories Flying Around

The first reaction of poll pundits has been to theorise that the BJP has lost its magic in the Hindi heartland, with the big slides in Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan being cited as proof. But then, most Delhi voters come from the same Hindi heartland, and the BJP has won all seven seats here. It also won all 29 seats in Madhya Pradesh and has almost swept Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand - in spite of the sympathy vote for Hemant Soren. Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand are also part of this landslide. Clearly then, the 'lost Hindi heartland' theory is a bit far-fetched.

The second theory relates to voters' anger over unemployment and inflation. Serious concerns were expressed about these issues both before and during the elections. But if they did so decisively influence voting intent, how did the BJP do so well in the states mentioned above? Not just that, inflation and unemployment seem to have had little effect on voters in Odisha and Telangana. It's also not clear how and why the BJP finally succeeded in penetrating south India by gaining considerable vote shares as well as a few seats. 

Read | How Almost Everyone Missed The All-Too-Visible Signs In Uttar Pradesh

The third theory is that the Hindutva pitch has failed to deliver any significant gains to the BJP despite the grand inauguration of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya in January this year. On the face of it, this theory may sound plausible. But then again, it'd be erroneous to believe that Hindutva works in a few states and doesn't in a few others. So one can safely dispense with this theory, too.

A Widely Scattered Verdict

One thing, however, remains common across most defeated BJP candidates: the losing names were either hugely unpopular in their own areas or were 'imports' from other parties, with whom their own party 'karyakartas' were not very happy. Even the 'Vote for Modi' pitch could not induce them to look past their frustration. A second important problem was the 'jod tod ki rajneeti' that played out in Maharashtra. For almost 18 months, the CVoter Mood Of The Nation (MOTN) survey had been flagging the discontent in Maharashtra over its patchwork government. The actual results now prove this.

A quick look at the numbers will showcase how fractured the verdict has been. 

• Let's start with Uttar Pradesh. From 62 in 2019, the BJP tally has come down to 36. That's a shocking drop. But not a whiff of this was caught in nearby Madhya Pradesh, where the BJP bagged all 29 seats. 
• In Delhi, the BJP has managed to sweep all seven seats, but in nearby Haryana, it could barely manage to hold on to five. Gujarat has more or less returned a sweeping victory. 
• In Karnataka, the BJP has lost eight seats, and in Maharashtra, it has been reduced to just nine seats against its 2019 tally of 23.
• In West Bengal, the party lost at least six seats against its victory in 18 in the previous general election. On the contrary, in nearby Odisha, the BJP tally has shot up from eight to 19. 

Quite a confusing picture, isn't it? 

Just as many said during the election campaign, there is no single national narrative. The final verdict demonstrates that the choices of the same sets of voters  - education, gender, ethnic identity, etc, being common parameters - were not influenced by any 'national' narrative. 

This brings us to the final question: how did all the exit polls get it so wrong? Even most conservative estimates had said that the NDA will comfortably touch 350 seats. The actual tally turned out to be over 50 seats less than that. The answer to this query could have been easier to deduce if there was some degree of uniformity in the results across India. But there isn't.

Since the verdict is so scattered, the authors have identified two reasons for the so-called "debacle" of the BJP. To be fair, any other party winning about 244 seats after two terms would have been applauded. But the great hype and expectations that the BJP generated around it have sort of backfired, painting even a clear NDA victory as some sort of defeat. 

Read | Arrogance, EVMs And Uttar Pradesh: Key Lessons From Election 2024

The co-author also travelled across India for three months in the run-up to the elections and found two things. One was that Modi remained very popular. And second, a majority of families were struggling to make ends meet and were not happy with their economic situation. Now, they did not say that this economic distress would translate into a vote against the BJP, particularly in places where the local candidate was unpopular. Our large CVoter team that fanned out across India also did not see any response that indicated a vote against the BJP. Yet, it is clear as day that ultimately, the silent voter remained silent and voted against the local BJP candidate. 

In the coming days, as more detailed constituency-wise analyses are done, the authors do not doubt that the defeated candidates would turn out to be those who had been unpopular with local voters. 

A related addendum to all this is internal rift and sabotage. In most major parties, there are factions that jostle for space. Often, these rivalries are settled in the name of a bigger goal: making the party win. That did not happen in the BJP's case this time. In hindsight, it can now be argued that the party was hit badly by internal rifts and sabotage, and the impact is clearly visible in Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. 

The BJP's task now is to draw substantive lessons from this verdict.

(Yashwant Deshmukh is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of CVoter Foundation, and Sutanu Guru is the Executive Director)

Disclaimer: These are the personal views of the author