New Delhi: BJP’s historic third consecutive victory in the Haryana Assembly elections on Tuesday put a question mark on the future of agencies conducting exit polls as they went horribly wrong for the second time in the last three months.
Tuesday's results reminded us of the reality of the wailing of Pradeep Gupta, the head of one such exit poll agency Axis My India. On June 4, the country saw him crying on national television.
Along with this, on the same evening, Congress leader Pawan Khera humiliated him to his satisfaction on Aaj Tak.
Even the government was accused of manipulating the stock market by colluding with the agencies conducting exit polls.
As a result, the stakeholders across the entire ecosystem were disgraced and it seemed that these agencies would take some learnings and improve their processes.
No agency conducted an opinion poll before the Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir elections and it appeared that they are playing safe as they are not in a position to bear another hit to their credibility.
But, the Haryana Exit Polls and people expecting them to do a course correction were proved completely wrong.
Gupta and his agency, who predicted a Congress victory with 70 seats in the Haryana elections, have been facing trolling since morning.
An X handle named Political Views wrote that Gupta aired Axis My India exit polls on YouTube after he failed to sell his analysis to any of the news channels including India Today.
Several X users asked him to retire as a psephologist and shut his agency.
Gupta had been boasting about getting the elections right until the June 4 results for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. However, he defended his exit poll then by saying that he got many states right except Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Maharashtra.
Despite that realisation, Gupta got a state wrong as small as Haryana.
The poll results on Tuesday led to political analysts debating how the exit polls are broken and whether they should cease to exit.
“News channels always give disclaimer that these exit polls are indicative of results in order to wash their hands if they go wrong. But in the end, their credibility is taking a hit with each wrong exit poll. They must consider taking a pause just like they did for opinion poll,” said a political analyst.
A veteran journalist cum political commentator told NewsDrum that the news channels are bound to show the exit polls to engage their viewers for the three-day period between polling and counting.
“Data from exit polls offer a lot of insights about voting patterns and debates around those insights keep their viewers glued to them. However, it is high time they should rethink their strategy to maintain their credibility,” the industry veteran said.
Ironically, the next chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Omar Abdulla also took to X to call exit polls a waste of time.
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