Chennai: The last word has not been said on the exit polls. After most of them late Monday predicted its defeat, the AIADMK camp should be upbeat now after the Thanthi TV’s exit poll said the party is likely to win 111 seats out of the total of 234 (less 2 where the poll has been put off to May 23) whereas the rival DMK alliance could bag 99 seats.
The AIADMK supporters woke up Tuesday lot more cheerful following tweets from Rajdeep Sardesai, consulting editor, India Today group, seemingly regretting his excitement of Monday evening when he was convinced that the DMK would emerge the winner after the votes are counted on May 19. Later in the night, at 11.16 pm to be exact, he tweeted: “I fear one of the axis My India exit poll figures may miss the mark. Now, don’t ask me which state! #exitpoll”.
And he did provide his answer later, tweeting at 7.25 am on Tuesday: “Would never discount amma! Let’s wait till 19th”. Rajdeep, perhaps, did not sleep through the night before that ‘confession’.
Many others too have raised doubts over the exit polls and questioned all the associated excitement. “Interesting exit poll coverage. My own take, pollsters I think may well have got one state wrong. Let’s see which one”, tweeted Bhupendra Chaubey of CNN-News18 past midnight and shortly later, added: “Assam, WB trends are clear. But what about Tamil Nadu. No one has a clue. Was it an issue less election? #PollOfPolls2016”.
Recalling that the DMK had polled around 24 per cent in 2014 with its ally Congress getting a little under five per cent, poll analyst Dr Sumanth C. Raman wonders from where this alliance would get the huge ten-plus swing to catapult it over the rival AIADMK. “Was there a perceptible anti-incumbency mood?” he told DC.
DMK supporters retort saying that the 10 per cent swing in favour of their party is not impossible since this is a state election whereas 2014 was for the Lok Sabha.
“People went to the booths on Monday with the option of choosing Kalaignar as CM whereas the Parliament poll was for electing the PM”, argued DMK spokesperson TKS Elangovan, former MP. “While the anti-Jayalalaithaa votes went two ways in 2014, one chunk for the BJP and the other for the DMK, this time, majority of people voted for Kalaignar to become CM as they found none of substance in the third front, namely the People’s Welfare Alliance”. Many look at the exit polls as ‘time-pass’ rather than any serious exercise deserving excitement, leave alone respect.
These 'sober' lot point to the past where any number of major misses have left the authors red-faced. For instance, Today's Chanakya predicted 155/243 for BJP-led NDA in Bihar last November as against just 83 for Nitish's Mahagathbandhan (Grand Alliance). Nitish became the CM and Chanakya apologised, but with an excuse attributing the fiasco to a funny human error.
“A simple computer template coding marking the alliances got interchanged at our end. Due to this, our seat numbers remained the same but respective alliances got interchanged”, it had said.
Mistakes could happen as simple as that. Also, some of the exit polls did not take a hard look at the impact of the People's Welfare Alliance and the PMK on the electorate. The votes scored by the PMK in the northern districts (where polling was high), the votes got by the PWA in the south and the BJP in the west, could have gone from either the DMK or the AIADMK, or both.
“I think the swing in favour of either the DMK or the AIADMK would completely depend on the votes that the Third Front (PWA) and the PMK manage to get”, says Dhanya Rajendran, editor-in-chief, TheNewsMinute.
“I toured quite a bit of Tamil Nadu and did not see any acute anger against the government, though there could have been some minor issues here and there. And the DMK could not create a buzz, like they did when they announced the free TV sets in 2006”.
The best answer to the toughest poll puzzle of recent times in Tamil Nadu is what Jayalalithaa gave the media after casting vote on Monday. “You have waited for so long, can't you wait for just two more days to know the result?”
