On 23 May, India would have a new government and exit pollsters would have their judgment day. The exit polls forecast anywhere between 267 (ABP-Nielsen) to 365 seats (India Today-Axis Poll) for the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The inability of pollsters to make accurate forecasts in the recent past (particularly, the 2004 Lok Sabha exit poll debacle) has added to the criticism of exit polls becoming an election night tamasha—nothing more than “a circus in town". Contrary to the popular perception that exit polls are often wrong, Prannoy Roy and Dorab R. Sopariwala in their book The Verdict: Decoding India’s Elections analyse 833 opinion and exit polls conducted in India since 1980 and show that the success rate of exit polls is higher in comparison to opinion polls (pre-poll surveys), and both are much better in predicting the outcome of the Lok Sabha elections than state elections. In fact, exit polls of reputed organizations have a very high rate of getting the winner right.

Source: Mint May 20, 2019 18:00 UTC