New Delhi: As in the past, many of the exit polls gave a clear majority to the BJP-led NDA going way off the mark in ground realities while those that predicted victory for the 'grand alliance' did not anticipate the sweep.
Today's Chankaya which had acquired reputation for its to-the-mark prediction, especially in the last Lok Sabha polls and the Delhi Assembly elections in 2013, came out with a profuse apology for its prediction of 155 seats for the BJP-led NDA.
"We sincerely apologise (to) all our friends & well wishers for not (being) able to predict Bihar. Many Congratulations!!!! to the winning alliance parties (sic)," Today's Chanakya tweeted on its official handle.
The NDTV also apologised for the error in its forecast as well as the early trends and blamed it on incorrect data. "The data from the field-work agency is normally reliable... was incorrect. And it happens. We are looking into it on what went wrong. We take the responsibility and sincerely apologise," Prannoy Roy said on NDTV.
Even today, after counting of votes began some channels including NDTV and ABP showed NDA ahead and the grand alliance trailing.
While NDTV showed that the NDA was ahead in 88 seats as against grand alliance in 57 of 150 seats, ABP said the NDA was leading in 75 seats while the Nitish Kumar led alliance was ahead in 70 seats out of 149.
With channels showing different trends, there was quite an uproar on social networking site Twitter. Finally many stuck to the figures released by the Election Commission of
India or by Doordarshan till the picture became clear. An exit poll on NDTV channel gave 120 to 130 seats for the NDA and 105 to 115 to rival JD(U)-led Grand Alliance. Polls on Times Now in association with C-Voter had predicted 122 seats in a house of 243 to the grand alliance while News X predicted 130 to 140 seats for it. The two channels gave the BJP-led alliance 111 and 90 to 100 seats respectively.
India Today-Cicero poll predicted 113 to 127 seats for the NDA comprising BJP, LJP, HAM (Secular) and RLSP and 111 to 123 for the JDU-led alliance while Hindi channel India TV forecast 112 to 132 seats for the JD-U led alliance and 101 to 121 for the NDA.
The Nitish Kumar-led alliance was predicted to get a simple majority of 120 to 124 by the News Nation channel, which predicted 115 to 119 seats for the rival alliance. ABP-Nielsen poll predicted 130 seats for the JD(U)-led alliance against 108 for BJP-headed grouping.
However, at the end, it turned out to be a different picture, with the Nitish-led 'grand alliance' bagging 166 seats and leading in 12 others, something no exit poll had predicted. The NDA managed to win or lead in only 58 of the 243 seats.
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