Exit polls good as indicative material, but don’t expect accuracy

Ahmedabad, DeshGujarat

Polling for Delhi assembly election took place yesterday(7th of February) and within hours exit poll figures were out on news channels. On the other hand, counting is going to take place on 10th of February. So from 7th evening to 10th morning, the entire political commentary nationwide has been taken over by exit poll results.

While pro-Aam Aadmi Party groups, Modi haters, foreign funded/directed NGOs, naxal sympathizers/supporters, left brigade, church and mullah attached groups and individuals have started celebration of AAP victory based on exit poll results across online platforms, the nationalist, BJP and saffron individuals have been found passing self-critical remarks on online platforms. In some cases right-supporters are found sad and in many cases hopeful too, as exit polls are just exit polls and counting is yet to take place.

While all this is happening on the basis of exit poll results, it needs to be understood that exit polls are excellent as indicative material, but they don’t represent exact or accurate figure of seats in every case. Political commentary therefore should ideally happen only after counting takes place and results are out.

Presented(graphic attached with this article) here are figures of year 2013 December Delhi assembly poll. Polling took place on 4 December 2013 while counting happened on 8 December. During 5-6-7 December, exit poll figures were in discussion all over Delhi and outside. On 8th, the result arrived.

As we said above, exit polls were very good as indicative material, but that’s it.

For example: C-Voter had predicted 24 seats for Congress, ORG-India Today had predicted 20 and ABP-Nielsen 16 but Congress actual got just 8 seats.

Today’s Chanakya predicted AAP to emerge as a single largest party while C-Voter gave 11 seats to AAP, ORG 6 and ABP Nielsen 16. When results were out, BJP with 32 seats emerged as the single largest party and not AAP with impressive 28 seats in its debut election.

As this time in 2015 almost all(barring just one Data Mineria) surveys have indicated excellent victory of AAP with good number of seats, indicatively it makes a point that AAP is likely to win, but then year 2013 December experience suggests that commentaries should be saved for 10 February so that they can contain accurate figures of performances.

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