At least six of 10 exit polls have projected a third consecutive term as chief minister for Mamata Banerjee with her party getting past the majority mark of 148.
Three exit polls predicted a first-ever conquest of Bengal for the BJP while the remaining one projected a seat band with a maximum of 156 for Trinamul and 160 for the BJP.
The ABP Ananda-C Voter poll that had surveyed 50 “VIP seats” gave Mamata the edge from Nandigram after categorising the contest as “close”.
A poll of the exit polls, conducted by NDTV, gave Trinamul 152 seats, the BJP 130 seats, and the Sanyukta Morcha of the Left Front, Congress and the Indian Secular Front 12 seats.
The six surveys that forecast a Trinamul victory conveyed little change from the Lok Sabha polls of 2019, where Trinamul secured leads from 164 Assembly segments, the BJP from 121 and the Congress from the remaining 9. Bengal has 294 Assembly seats.
All 10 surveys portrayed the Morcha as a distant third, with 0 to 26 seats.
ABP Ananda-C Voter gave Trinamul 152-164 seats, the BJP 109-121 and the Morcha 14-25.
It predicted a 42.1 per cent vote share for Trinamul, 39.2 per cent for the BJP, 15.4 per cent for the Morcha and 3.3 per cent for the rest.
This too largely mirrored the vote shares of 2019, when Trinamul polled 43.69 per cent of the votes, the BJP 40.64 per cent, the Left 6.34 per cent and the Congress 5.67 per cent. In 2019, the Left and the Congress had not been in alliance.
Between them, the surveys by ABP Ananda-C Voter, ETG Research, Polstrat, P-MARQ, Ipsos and Today’s Chanakya gave Trinamul between 152 and 180 seats. In 2016, Trinamul had won 211 seats.
These six surveys gave the BJP a minimum of 105 seats and a maximum of 132. Axis My India projected a band of 130-156 for Trinamul and 134-160 for the BJP.
The surveys that went the other way were CNX, People’s Pulse and Jan Ki Baat. CNX gave the BJP 138-148, keeping Trinamul tantalisingly close with 128-138. Given the margin of error for such surveys, the CNX projection indicates all three possibilities — a victory for either or a hung House.
Jan Ki Baat gave the BJP 162-185 while predicting 104-121 for Trinamul. People’s Pulse gave the BJP 173-192, with 64-88 for Trinamul.
An exit poll analyst said the variance in the predictions owed primarily to differences among the pollsters in their estimations of the extent of religious polarisation among the voters. “If one assumes that the surveys have caught the general drift, the narrowness of the gap between the two main contenders suggests that polarisation wasn’t as pervasive as the BJP would have liked,” he added.
Trinamul said the surveys had underestimated the size of Mamata’s victory while the BJP said no exit poll had gone in the party’s favour since its inception.
Other states
Exit polls elsewhere largely projected a BJP victory in Assam, a DMK sweep in Tamil Nadu, a Left rerun in Kerala and a win for an alliance in which the BJP is a partner in Puducherry.