Why I'm not trusting anybody who says they know who's winning elections
The EVMs have been sealed and secured. The fate of several thousand candidates for the Legislative Assemblies of five states will be known only tomorrow after the counting.
However, since last evening, all TV channels are holding discussions on nothing but the exit polls of the marathon elections to these five states conducted over the last two months.
All aspects that may have influenced voting viz religion, caste, shamshaan, kabristaan are being dissected threadbare, or in other words what they say in Hindi “baal ki khaal nikali ja rahi hai”.
Psephologists are revelling in the attention bestowed upon them and are having a field day making predictions, discussing methodology of conduct of the exit polls and justifying the results in the face of robust opposition being presented by representatives of the political parties concerned.
Various channels are predicting different results for different states. There are mainly five agencies whose predictions are being discussed, and the predictions not only differ but differ widely.
Two agencies are predicting a sweep for the BJP in UP, giving it almost two-thirds majority, while two others are giving the party seats much below the simple majority mark and predicting a hung house. The fifth one is predicting BJP as the party in the lead but falling short of majority by about 20 seats.
For Punjab, most polls predict a good majority for the Congress, with the SAD-BJP combine being whipped out. One of the agencies, however, is predicting a hung house with both Congress and AAP tied at 55 each.
The exit polls for other states also are generally divided in their predictions, except perhaps for Manipur where most predict a BJP victory.
Some channels in order to overcome the difficulty of these wide variations have devised their own methodology of averaging out the results of the agencies to extrapolate their own predictions - and are calling it the “Poll of Polls”.
The panelists on different channels are mouthing strange inanities. Positive predictions for their party in a particular state are being lapped up to praise their modality. However, if the same agency has predicted a loss for their party in another state, they are equally prompt in denouncing it and without batting an eyelid take support from a different exit poll.
Channels are pushing for recognition of the exit poll conducted by the agency commissioned by them to be taken as actual results and representatives of political parties are being asked to analyse various factors for victory or defeat.
Some panelists are cautious in their response while some others are outright euphoric and can’t wait for the actual results to be announced to start celebrations.
Viewers like me are confused. Some are euphoric and some others disheartened. The talk on dining tables and gatherings tend to centre on the results put out by the exit polls and the prospects of each party.
Various permutations and combinations for government formation are being analysed. Twitter and WhatsApp warriors have already started trolling the opponents and sarcastic messages, videos and photos are being posted to spite those having opposing views.
Some diehard supporters of a particular party have also started quoting “satta bazar” rates in support of their victory.
Some channels are openly displaying their editorial slant during discussions through display of captions. One channel had a caption stating “Modi wave sweeps polls”; another had a caption stating “Congress loses another state - Manipur” without referring to Punjab where it appears to be doing well.
Surprisingly, the results of these exit polls are widely different from the predictions of opinion polls telecast just before the start of the elections. One leader when asked about the results of the exit polls stated unequivocally that they are “nonsensical” and added that people from one channel had confided to him about two days ago predicting a totally different story. He also alleged that media channels have been forced to present a different picture.
Notwithstanding the claims of the above person, past experience shows that exit polls - in spite of whatever the psephologists may claim - have rarely, if ever, been accurate.
Two glaring examples are the polls in Delhi in 2015 when no one gave the AAP a chance. The party not only swept the polls but also for the first time in the history of Indian politics won over 95 per cent seats.
The second example is that of Bihar where everyone predicted the BJP to win with comfortable majority. In fact, one of the channels on the day of counting interpreted the early trends to imply a BJP victory. However, the results proved otherwise.
The election results will be out tomorrow and only one of the agencies conducting the exit polls, or may be none of them, will be proved correct.
The psephologists can continue to revel in glory till then, after which they will focus on convincing everyone that their predictions were well within the margin of error. After all elections keep happening in India every six months and they have legitimate right to earn their bread.