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The Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) was likely to secure a landslide win in Delhi, exit polls showed after the end of polling for Assembly elections in the national capital on Saturday. The polls showed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) could end up a poor second, while the Congress was likely to be decimated.
The final results, following the counting of votes slated for Tuesday, could turn out to be the first major setback for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah. The Modi-Shah team has led the party to a series of Assembly poll triumphs on the trot, following the party’s stellar victory in the Lok Sabha polls last year. (BATTLEGROUND DELHI)
In the run-up to the elections, several non-BJP, non-Congress parties had announced their support for AAP; a BJP defeat in Delhi could potentially impact national politics. To discuss the Assembly polls, as well as the developments related to Bihar, Prime Minister Modi held a meeting of senior party leaders at his residence at 7, Race Course Road in the evening.
Slightly more than 67 per cent of Delhi’s 13.3 million electors voted on Saturday, an all-time high that beat the previous best of 66 per cent (recorded during the 2013 Assembly polls). The exit polls belied the BJP’s assessment that a high voter turnout would help the party. All the polls showed AAP was likely reach the majority mark of 36 in the 70-member Assembly, with the BJP a distant second.
Some predicted an AAP sweep, forecasting as many as 53 seats for the party. The polls predicted the gap between the vote shares of AAP and the BJP could range from six per cent to a whopping 17 per cent. They showed an increase of 13 to 20 per cent in AAP’s vote share since the 2013 polls, which lad led to a hung verdict, and a rise of four to seven per cent in the BJP’s vote share. Both will benefit from the loss in the Congress’s vote share, which could plummet up to 20 per cent, exit polls said. In the 2013 elections, the BJP had secured 33 per cent of the votes, AAP 30 per cent and the Congress 24.5 per cent.
While AAP leader Yogendra Yadav said the party would win a landslide victory, the BJP was unwilling to concede defeat. It pointed out how nearly all exit polls had failed to predict the party’s thumping win in the Lok Sabha elections, as well as the results of the 2013 Delhi Assembly polls. Modi, in his last rally on February 4, had termed opinion polls forecasting an AAP win “bazaroo (cheap)”.
“Support for AAP is intense in the lower economic strata, but for BJP, it extends across the economic spectrum. A voter turnout below 55 per cent would have favoured AAP, while this huge turnout is a sign of a big mandate for the BJP, a two-thirds majority,” said BJP spokesperson G V L Narasimha Rao.
The party's campaign for the Assembly election was mired in woes, including infighting and the inexperience of its chief ministerial candidate, Kiran Bedi, in politics.
The party was jittery enough to deploy nearly all its senior ministers in the campaign. Later, it had launched a vicious attack on AAP for its ostensibly questionable political donations.
Since last year's Lok Sabha elections, this was the first time the party had opted to nominate a chief ministerial candidate, leading AAP terming Bedi as the PM's "insurance policy". Until the eve of the polls, party insiders had feared a repeat of the 2012 Uttarakhand Assembly results, which had showed the BJP failed to win a majority in the 70-member Assembly, with even its chief ministerial candidate, B C Khanduri, losing his seat.
But on Saturday, the mood was upbeat, with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) cadre helping mobilise supporters to come out and vote. Saffron-capped workers were present in good numbers in most of Delhi's 12,000-odd polling booths. "As Delhi votes today, urging voters to go out and vote in large numbers. I particularly call upon my young friends to vote in record numbers," Modi tweeted early Saturday morning. But by evening, there was doubt on whether even its middle-class support base had actually voted for the party. BJP booth level workers felt significant middle-class votes had eluded the party, as people looked for a "counterbalance" to a strong BJP. They said it wasn't as sharp a 'haves-versus-have-nots' contest that the media had depicted. A party insider said members had expected the Congress to put up a better fight, ensuring a split in the anti-BJP votes between the party and AAP. But exit polls predicted the Congress would fare poorly, which is likely to hurt the BJP. For AAP, the day was marked by intense hard work to compensate for its lack of organisational muscle, with most of its voluble support on Delhi's streets coming from outside. AAP leader Kumar Vishwas said he visited several booths and thought BJP workers had "given up". In the morning, AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal urged people to vote for "honest people". At the end of the polling, he congratulated Delhi's population for rejecting "the politics of caste and religion" and hoped the final results would reflect the findings of the exit polls. The Congress, which was confident of doing well in Muslim-dominated constituencies, felt AAP managed to dent its support base in these areas. In 2013, the party had won eight seats but on Saturday, few exit polls were willing to predict the party would win more than five seats.
For all state Assembly elections since the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP has emerged as the single-largest party, barring the case of Jammu & Kashmir. It had won in Haryana and emerged as the single-largest party in both Maharashtra and Jharkhand.
The final results, following the counting of votes slated for Tuesday, could turn out to be the first major setback for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah. The Modi-Shah team has led the party to a series of Assembly poll triumphs on the trot, following the party’s stellar victory in the Lok Sabha polls last year. (BATTLEGROUND DELHI)
In the run-up to the elections, several non-BJP, non-Congress parties had announced their support for AAP; a BJP defeat in Delhi could potentially impact national politics. To discuss the Assembly polls, as well as the developments related to Bihar, Prime Minister Modi held a meeting of senior party leaders at his residence at 7, Race Course Road in the evening.
Slightly more than 67 per cent of Delhi’s 13.3 million electors voted on Saturday, an all-time high that beat the previous best of 66 per cent (recorded during the 2013 Assembly polls). The exit polls belied the BJP’s assessment that a high voter turnout would help the party. All the polls showed AAP was likely reach the majority mark of 36 in the 70-member Assembly, with the BJP a distant second.
Some predicted an AAP sweep, forecasting as many as 53 seats for the party. The polls predicted the gap between the vote shares of AAP and the BJP could range from six per cent to a whopping 17 per cent. They showed an increase of 13 to 20 per cent in AAP’s vote share since the 2013 polls, which lad led to a hung verdict, and a rise of four to seven per cent in the BJP’s vote share. Both will benefit from the loss in the Congress’s vote share, which could plummet up to 20 per cent, exit polls said. In the 2013 elections, the BJP had secured 33 per cent of the votes, AAP 30 per cent and the Congress 24.5 per cent.
While AAP leader Yogendra Yadav said the party would win a landslide victory, the BJP was unwilling to concede defeat. It pointed out how nearly all exit polls had failed to predict the party’s thumping win in the Lok Sabha elections, as well as the results of the 2013 Delhi Assembly polls. Modi, in his last rally on February 4, had termed opinion polls forecasting an AAP win “bazaroo (cheap)”.
“Support for AAP is intense in the lower economic strata, but for BJP, it extends across the economic spectrum. A voter turnout below 55 per cent would have favoured AAP, while this huge turnout is a sign of a big mandate for the BJP, a two-thirds majority,” said BJP spokesperson G V L Narasimha Rao.
The party's campaign for the Assembly election was mired in woes, including infighting and the inexperience of its chief ministerial candidate, Kiran Bedi, in politics.
The party was jittery enough to deploy nearly all its senior ministers in the campaign. Later, it had launched a vicious attack on AAP for its ostensibly questionable political donations.
Since last year's Lok Sabha elections, this was the first time the party had opted to nominate a chief ministerial candidate, leading AAP terming Bedi as the PM's "insurance policy". Until the eve of the polls, party insiders had feared a repeat of the 2012 Uttarakhand Assembly results, which had showed the BJP failed to win a majority in the 70-member Assembly, with even its chief ministerial candidate, B C Khanduri, losing his seat.
But on Saturday, the mood was upbeat, with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) cadre helping mobilise supporters to come out and vote. Saffron-capped workers were present in good numbers in most of Delhi's 12,000-odd polling booths. "As Delhi votes today, urging voters to go out and vote in large numbers. I particularly call upon my young friends to vote in record numbers," Modi tweeted early Saturday morning. But by evening, there was doubt on whether even its middle-class support base had actually voted for the party. BJP booth level workers felt significant middle-class votes had eluded the party, as people looked for a "counterbalance" to a strong BJP. They said it wasn't as sharp a 'haves-versus-have-nots' contest that the media had depicted. A party insider said members had expected the Congress to put up a better fight, ensuring a split in the anti-BJP votes between the party and AAP. But exit polls predicted the Congress would fare poorly, which is likely to hurt the BJP. For AAP, the day was marked by intense hard work to compensate for its lack of organisational muscle, with most of its voluble support on Delhi's streets coming from outside. AAP leader Kumar Vishwas said he visited several booths and thought BJP workers had "given up". In the morning, AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal urged people to vote for "honest people". At the end of the polling, he congratulated Delhi's population for rejecting "the politics of caste and religion" and hoped the final results would reflect the findings of the exit polls. The Congress, which was confident of doing well in Muslim-dominated constituencies, felt AAP managed to dent its support base in these areas. In 2013, the party had won eight seats but on Saturday, few exit polls were willing to predict the party would win more than five seats.
For all state Assembly elections since the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP has emerged as the single-largest party, barring the case of Jammu & Kashmir. It had won in Haryana and emerged as the single-largest party in both Maharashtra and Jharkhand.
