How TV channels jumped the gun on Himachal elections

By afternoon, as the election commission counted over 70% of the vote, Himachal Pradesh had turned the table with Congress in the lead in the 68-member assembly

By 8:30am on Thursday morning, most news channels had all but declared a clean sweep for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, even as less than 5% of the votes were counted, most of which were postal ballots.

For Gujarat, most channels declared the ruling BJP will win over 150 seats (Representative Photo)

“Let me show you a map of Himachal Pradesh, will this colour change? BJP is leading in most of the constituencies. BJP has started ‘super strong’ in early trends,” said a commentator on one of the TV channels.

According to a second anchor, BJP already claimed victory in Himachal Pradesh even as the counting of votes remained. “This is an all-India BJP wave,” the anchor said on a live channel. “BJP confident of victory, despite cliffhanger,” they flashed.

Even as of 10am, as counting progressed at a quick pace and 16% of the votes were counted, the channels stuck to the narrative that even though BJP seemed to be lagging behind in Himachal Pradesh, nearly 10 seats showed a margin of fewer than 1,000 votes, which could swing either way.

Full Coverage | 2022 Assembly elections - Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh

According to TV channels, senior Congress leaders, including Himachal Pradesh Congress chief Pratibha Virbhadra Singh’s son Vikramaditya Singh, Mukesh Agnihotri and Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu, seemed to be trailing compared to their BJP counterparts.

However, as the counting of votes progressed, the more the changes became evident. By afternoon, as the election commission counted over 70% of the vote, Himachal Pradesh had turned the table with Congress in the lead in the 68-member assembly.

Congress was leading in 39 constituencies by 1:30pm, 35 is the majority mark, according to the election commission data. Even then, some channels quizzed, “can this be declared a victory for Congress?” as they moved on to how “resort politics was underway in the state.”

For Gujarat, most channels declared the ruling BJP will win over 150 seats.

Kalpana Sharma, a media columnist, said while the model of early trends works for the US elections, it doesn’t work for India.

“The US elections, they do this, as they have a system of counting that predicts the result almost accurately, which is why if an incumbent is losing, they announce even before the final result is declared,” she said.

“However, in a first past the post-election like that of India, it is ridiculous to adopt the same technique. The concept of calling an election never works. There is always a discrepancy between the EC data and news channels because one doesn’t know on what basis they predicting these trends,” she said.

Former election commissioner SY Quraishi said that people should know that postal ballots are the first to be counted and they do not reflect any early trends. “The real result follows, I don’t understand why channels in their haste to break the news make mistakes,” he said.