Only today's Chanakya got exit poll figures right

Except for Today's Chanakya, none of the organisations that conducted exit polls were able to correctly predict the final tallies of the BJP or the Congress in the Lok Sabha election.

Times Now-ORG, Headlines Today-Cicero, ABP News-Nielsen, India TV-Cvoter, CNN IBN-CSDS and News24-Today's Chanakya conducted exit polls.

While all predicted a BJP-led government at the centre, none except Today's Chanakya was able to correctly project the tally of the BJP and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

Times Now-ORG gave 257 seats to the NDA and 135 to the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) while Headlines Today-Cicero gave 272 seats to the BJP-led pre-poll coalition and 115 seats to the Congress-led coalition.

CNN IBN-CSDS, ABP News-Nielsen and Cvoter-India TV gave 276, 281 and 289 seats to the NDA while giving 97, 97, and 101 seats to the UPA.

Only Today's Chanakya gave 340 seats to the NDA and 70 seats to the UPA, which matched the tally of the two coalitions. According to figures given by Election Commission of India, the NDA romped home on 335 seats whereas the UPA won 61 seats.

Manindra Thakur, professor of political science at JNU said exit polls "underestimated the BJP and NDA this time. They could not catch the trend".

Asked why, he said being a big country, it was difficult for exit polls in India to get the sampling right which made them often "over-estimate or under-estimate the electoral performance of a party. It is like a gamble".