New Delhi: The exit polls of the Assembly elections put Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress slightly ahead of the BJP in West Bengal, a return of the saffron camp in Assam and MK Stalin-led DMK’s victory in Tamil Nadu. In Kerala, Pinarayi Vijayan-led LDF is predicted to retain power and the BJP’s victory in Puducherry. The exit poll results started coming in after the voting procedure for the last phase concluded in Bengal at 6.30pm today. The eighth and final phase of elections was underway in Bengal where stray incidents of violence were reported from several areas, but the overall polling process has been peaceful with 76.07 per turnout recorded till 5pm, EC officials said.
Voting was held in 11,860 polling stations of 35 constituencies — 11 each in Murshidabad and Birbhum, six in Malda and seven in north Kolkata. The polling continued till 6.30pm. In Bolpur’s Ilambazar, BJP candidate Anirban Ganguly’s car was ransacked by villagers with bamboo poles and bricks. Ganguly was unhurt.
Meanwhile, the Election Commission has sought details of an incident where a bomb was hurled near Mahajati Sadan Auditorium in north Kolkata earlier this morning.
West Bengal
Here are the exit polls results for the West Bengal Assembly. The majority mark in the 294-member Assembly is 148.
Poll of exit polls: TMC-158; BJP-115; CPM – 19;INC-0 and ETG Research
Unlike opinion polls which are based on public opinion, exit polls are based on surveys conducted immediately after voters exit the polling stations. Exit polls remain barred when elections are being held. For these four states and one UT, the Election Commission prohibited the conduct and publishing of results of any exit polls between March 27m 7am and April 29, 7.30pm. Later, the time was amended to April 29, 7pm.
Times Now’s poll of polls which is an average of the predictions of some pollsters has also kept Trinamool ahead of the BJP. Only CNX-Republic has predicted that BJP will get 143 seats while the TMC will get 133 seats. Rest of the psepholigists, including P-Maarq, ETG and CVoter, has projected clear majority for the TMC.
In ‘Didi versus Modi’ in West Bengal, C Voter is keeping Didi ahead with 158 projected seats, while BJP is likely to bag 115 seats and the Left-Congress alliance will get somewhere around 19 seats.
In India, exit polls were almost indigenously developed by the pioneering Delhi-based Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in the 1960s.
