Bihar win or loss? Pollsters go haywire, apologise

New Delhi: Just like it has happened in the past, almost all the exit polls on various television channels went horribly wrong in predicting the Bihar Assembly elections results. By the time the final tally came out, many of them actually apologised for their wrong predictions. While NDTV showed the NDA-led alliance clearly leading during the initial phase of the counting on Sunday, which even prompted the BJP workers to burst crackers outside the party head office here, Today’s Chanakya had predicted a majority for the BJP-led coalition.

It was only CNN-IBN which predicted the elections results correctly, as it was the only channel which had given the JD(U), RJD and Congress Grand Alliance a clear majority. Today’s Chanakya, which had acquired a reputation for to-the-mark predictions, especially in the last Lok Sabha polls and the Delhi Assembly elections in 2013, tendered a profuse apology for its prediction of 155 seats for the BJP-led NDA. “We sincerely apologise (to) all our friends & well wishers for not (being) able to predict Bihar. Many Congratulations!!!! to the winning alliance parties (sic),” Today’s Chanakya tweeted on its official handle.

NDTV also apologised for the error in its forecast as well as the early trends and blamed it on incorrect data. “The data from the field-work agency is normally reliable... Was incorrect. And it happens. We are looking into it on what went wrong. We take the responsibility and sincerely apologise,” Prannoy Roy said on NDTV. On Sunday morning, as counting of votes began, some channels, including NDTV and ABP, showed NDA ahead and the grand alliance trailing. While NDTV showed that the NDA was ahead in 88 seats as against the grand alliance in 57 of 150 seats, ABP said the NDA was leading in 75 seats while the Nitish Kumar-led alliance was ahead in 70 seats out of 149.

With channels showing different trends, there was quite an uproar on social networking site Twitter. Finally many stuck to the figures released by the Election Commission of India or by Doordarshan till the picture became clear.

An exit poll on NDTV channel gave 120 to 130 seats to the NDA and 105 to 115 to the rival JD(U)-led Grand Alliance. Polls on Times Now in association with C-Voter had predicted 122 seats in a House of 243 to the Grand Alliance while News X predicted 130 to 140 seats for it. The two channels gave the BJP-led alliance 111 and 90 to 100 seats, respectively.

The India Today-Cicero poll predicted 113 to 127 seats for the NDA comprising BJP, LJP, HAM (Secular) and RLSP and 111 to 123 for the JD(U)-led alliance while Hindi channel India TV forecast 112 to 132 seats for the JD(U)-led alliance and 101 to 121 for the NDA. The Nitish Kumar-led alliance was predicted to get a simple majority of 120 to 124 by the channel News Nation, which predicted 115 to 119 seats for the rival alliance. The ABP-Nielsen poll predicted 130 seats for the JD(U)-led alliance against 108 for the BJP-headed grouping.

However, at the end, a completely different picture emerged, with the Nitish-led Grand Alliance bagging 178 seats, something no exit poll had predicted. The NDA managed to win only 58 of the 243 seats.

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