Historically, exit polls have had greater success in predicting election results than opinion polls. This time round, opinion polls are widely divided in both their vote share and seat share forecasts. This is because in a first-past-the-post system such as the one we use in India, not only does the overall vote share matter, but also the distribution of this vote share among constituencies. Yet, in all the confusion among the different exit polls, there are some straws we can clutch at to try and extract some signal. Next, we can look for consistency between a poll’s vote share and seat share predictions based on a rudimentary vote swing model.

Source: Mint May 15, 2018 00:22 UTC