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Delhi Exit Polls 2020: Exit polls show AAP set for major win in the Capital
Delhi Exit Polls 2020 Live Updates: Millions of voters would have cast their ballot to decide the fate of 672 candidates by then in this assembly elections.
Voting across Delhi’s 70 assembly constituencies have come to an end and initial numbers of the exit polls are coming in. The Delhi election campaign saw some acrimonious electoral battles with candidates of the Aam Aadmi Party, Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress in the fray.
Millions of voters have exercised their universal franchise and have decided the fate of 672 candidates in this assembly elections. As per reports, provisional voter turnout till 5 pm has been recorded at 57.87%.
Three exit polls have predicted that AAP will make a comeback in the Delhi elections. Times Now-IPSOS has predicted AAP to win 44 seats, 23 less than what they had won previously in 2015.
Republic-Jan Ki Baat predicted Arvind Kejriwal is set for a hat-trick and is pegged to win 48-61 seats.
NewsX too has said that AAP is set for a return to power with 50-56 seats.
According to pollsters, BJP has improved its vote share this time in the capital. According to Times Now-IPSOS BJP is set to improve its tally to 26 from its meagre three.
Before the votes are counted on February 11 and results are declared all eyes will be on exit polls, which will be aired by television news channels soon.
Delhi Exit Poll Results 2020 Live updates
Exit polls are based on responses of people who have just cast their votes. Pollsters predict the results much before the actual counting of votes, assuming that the voters have correctly revealed their choice.
Health Warning: Exit polls often get it wrong
Results of elections in India can be extremely hard to predict and there have been instances where pollsters have been spectacularly off the mark.
Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s AAP is looking to grab power for the second straight term in the national capital and has touted its local governance record to woo voters in the bitter poll campaign.
The BJP, which had Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah leading the party’s electoral campaign, has pulled out all stops to wrest power from the AAP.
It pitched its campaign on nationalism and projected the AAP’s position on the Citizenship (Amendment) Act as a threat to national security and its support to Shaheen Bagh as “anti-national”.
The AAP had swept the last assembly election held in 2015 by winning 67 seats and the BJP managed three. The Congress, which had held the reigns of Delhi for 15 years, drew a blank.
The AAP got 54% votes in the 2015 polls but it dipped to 26% in the municipal elections in 2017 and 18% in the Lok Sabha polls in 2019 when it couldn’t even open its account.
Both the BJP and the Congress have improved their vote share in this period. The BJP polled 56% votes in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, up from 36% in 2017 and 32% in 2015.
The Congress got just 10% of votes in 2015 but it increased to 21% in 2017 and 23% in 2019.
A Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS)-Lokniti poll conducted during the 2019 Lok Sabha polls showed that only about half of the people who voted for the BJP or the Congress in the Lok Sabha polls would have voted for the same party in case of a snap assembly election. The corresponding figure was 82% for the AAP.
Exit polls to Delhi assembly elections will be announced on Saturday after 6.30pm as per the Election Commission mandate for all media houses and pollsters.
The deadline by the poll body is to ensure that the predicted trends do not influence the behaviour of voters in any way.
Several pollsters, including Chanakya, IPSOS and Republic TV-Jan Ki Baat polls, are expected to publish the exit polls.
