Pollsters continue missing the mark: Why election forecasts go wrong

Surprisingly, even many exit polls have been off the mark in recent years. Opinion polls conducted before balloting suffer from the problem of surveying people who may not vote on polling day

In India, the experience with Lok Sabha electoral poll forecasts has been frustrating in recent years. In 2004, almost all pollsters predicted a victory for the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), but the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) won instead. In 2009, while predictions pointed to a clear UPA victory, the actual outcome was a hung Parliament. Most polls failed to foresee the decisive BJP victory in 2014.

 

In 2019, while most opinion polls suggested the NDA had run out of electoral steam and would fall short of the majority mark, the exit polls predicted the NDA crossing