NEW DELHI: Caution and embarrassment may not be the most searched words on the internet in 2024, but are quite certainly the most haunted takeaways for the pollsters, who in pursuit of the bullseye, missed the entire electoral dartboard this year.
While one can beat around the bush with the intricacies of data and hindsight interpretations of poll outcomes, the psephology fully faltered when presenting the larger picture of the elections in 2024.
Poll
Which state’s election result in 2024 surprised you the most?
The insufficient sample size, tight deadline, competition, geographical challenges, linguistic barriers and monetary stake could possibly be attributed to factors that led to a perpetual miscalculation of the voters’ perceptions.
In big polls like the Lok Sabha elections and the US presidential elections or small ones like the assembly polls in Haryana, Maharashtra, and Jharkhand, the actual outcomes of the elections were inverse to what exit polls had predicted, with Jammu & Kashmir being the exception.
Pollsters get in pickle
The first crucial election that the country faced in 2024 was the humongous Lok Sabha elections, which covered all the Indian states and Union territories, with over eight thousand candidates in the fray, 10 lakh polling booths, and 97 crore registered voters.
The magnanimity of the general elections makes it nearly impossible to predict the outcomes with precision, however, pollsters somehow manage to pull off the larger picture, which was not the case this year.
After the dust settled following the high-octane campaign for the second-longest Lok Sabha election and seven phases of voting on June 1, the pollsters took charge and predicted a landslide victory for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
The poll of polls, comprising the seven major pollsters, predicted 361 seats for the ruling NDA and 145 for the opposition INDIA bloc in the 543-member Lok Sabha. The numbers were nearly in sync with the BJP’s expectations of “Abki Baar, 400 Paar”. However, three days later, it turned out that predictions were averse to reality as the actual outcome threw up a shocking mandate in front of the pollsters.
The D-Day
On June 4, the BJP got the shock of the election season as it not only missed its expected target but also failed to secure a majority on its own for the first time since 2014. The party won only 240 seats.
The BJP’s failure to win 272 seats in the Lok Sabha elections made Bihar CM Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) and Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party (TDP) key players in the NDA, which was dominated until then by the saffron party. The NDA sarkar also gave a new lease of life to the opposition that was almost relegated to the margins.
With no party with a brute majority in Parliament and the revival of the opposition, the competency of pollsters was one of the relevant topics at the centre of political discourse.
Double trouble
Along with the Lok Sabha results, the pollsters also failed to read the mood of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh, where electors voted simultaneously for the new assembly during the summer elections. In Andhra, the exit polls claimed a hung assembly, with 84-91 seats for Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP and 83-90 seats for Jagan Mohan Reddy’s YSRCP in the 175-member Andhra Pradesh assembly.
When the results were declared, the TDP steamrolled the Jagan’s YSRCP as Chandrababu’s party won the lion’s share by bagging 135 assembly seats. Another key figure who emerged invincible was Pawan Kalyan, whose Janasena Party achieved its first significant victory in its decade-long political journey. The party won all the 21 assembly and two Parliament seats it contested, marking a 100% success rate.
Andhra assembly result 2024
In Odisha, the fight was interesting in a way that BJP and Naveen Patnaik’s BJD weren’t cut-throat rivals but still made fierce attempts to win the coastal state. The numbers given by the pollsters showed a close contest between BJP and BJD, which again was not the case when results started to pour in as the BJP scripted history and halted Patnaik’s 24-year juggernaut.
For the first time, the BJP made inroads in the state on its own by winning 78 seats in the 147-member Odisha assembly. Naveen Patnaik’s BJD won 51 seats, down from the 112 seats it won in the 2019 state elections.
Once a mistake, twice …?
Two months down the line came the Haryana elections. This time the Congress was riding high on its improved Lok Sabha tally as the party had won 99 seats, up from 52 seats it had managed in 2019 parliamentary polls. Other reasons the party believed it could trounce the ruling BJP was 10 years of anti-incumbency, coupled with agitations of farmers and wrestlers.
The exit polls added to the adrenaline rush of the Congress as the pollsters predicted 55 seats for the party and 27 for the BJP in the 90-member Haryana assembly. The BJP, which was still recovering from the Lok Sabha shock, claimed victory like any other political party but kept fingers crossed.
On October 8, when early trends began to trickle in, it seemed the pollsters were bang on. The supposition was, however, short-lived as the results wildly swayed in the favour of the BJP.
The BJP won a whopping 48 seats in Haryana, which was the party’s all-time best in the state till now. The Congress won 37 seats, falling short of the majority mark by 9 seats. While the party at the receiving end had changed, the performance of pollsters was a replica of June 4.
Notably, the vote difference between the BJP (39.94%) and the Congress (39.09%) was just 0.84%, which resulted in a gap of 11 seats between both parties. Clearly, pollsters did not see that coming and failed to factor in elements that could lead up to such a narrow vote margin with a wide seat gap.
Less trial more error
A lot of mud had stuck about pollsters after the failed predictions of the Lok Sabha and Haryana elections, however, Maharashtra and Jharkhand assembly polls served as another chance to understand the voters’ perspective.
The pollsters had predicted 155 for the BJP-led Mahayuti and 122 for the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) in the 288-member Maharashtra assembly. For Jharkhand, the poll of polls suggested a close fight between the INDIA bloc and the NDA.
In Maharashtra, the ruling Mahayuti won a paradigm-shattering mandate by bagging 230 seats. Though the ruling alliance won, as the pollsters predicted, it nevertheless was far from accurate as no exit poll predicted the complete desecration of the opposition MVA, which won only 48 seats in the state elections.
In tribal-dominated Jharkhand, all the exit polls, barring one, had predicted a neck-and-neck fight between the NDA and INDIA bloc, giving 38 seats to the JMM-led coalition and 40 to the BJP-led alliance.
When it rains it pours, the adage was proved in Jharkhand as almost all the exit poll predictions went down the drain.
On November 23, when the Jharkhand assembly results were declared, the INDIA bloc defeated the NDA by winning a resounding mandate as it emphatically won 50 seats in the 81-member Jharkhand assembly. Notably, the vote share of Hemant Soren’s JMM, which won 34 seats, was 23.44%, less than BJP’s 33.18%.
Trump trumps pollsters
2024 was tough not only for the Indian pollsters but also for those in the United States. In the US, opinion polls suggested a tight contest between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, which ultimately was not the case.
What exacerbated the embarrassment for the pollsters in the US was their failure to read the swing states. The pollsters had predicted a narrow electoral college victory for Kamala Harris in a majority of the seven swing states, including North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin.
With victory in Arizona, Trump won all seven swing states he had lost in 2020. Trump managed to win 312 electoral votes to Kamala Harris’ 226 to complete a remarkable victory.
2024 was undoubtedly the election year, not only because each election was suspenseful leading to nail-biting result days, but for the fact that it redefined the fate and contours of the pollsters.
