Exit polls give edge to BJP in tight Delhi race

The exit polls came after a weeks-long bruising campaign and a day of acrimonious polling that saw turnouts nearly best 2020 figures in the city.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is gaining in strength in the Delhi assembly elections and might be headed for a victory after 27 years by ending the stranglehold of the Aam Aadmi Party over the national capital, a clutch of exit polls predicted on Wednesday.

Women arrive to cast their votes during at Jamia Nagar, Okhla, on Wednesday. (PTI)

The exit polls came after a weeks-long bruising campaign and a day of acrimonious polling that saw turnouts nearly best 2020 figures in large swathes of the city. The votes will be counted on Saturday.

To be sure, exit polls are not always accurate and have often got the verdict wrong in earlier elections, especially when diverse populations, castes and communities are at play. These elections are also a litmus test for pollsters and their methodology since a majority of them got the predictions for the Lok Sabha polls as well as a string of assembly polls, including Haryana, wrong. Many pollsters adopted a low-key approach in putting out their data on Wednesday, with some prominent outfits not releasing numbers and a bunch of little-known entities entering the fray.

Still, most of the polls on Wednesday were unanimous in terms of the larger direction of the outcome — they forecast that the BJP would improve dramatically on its 2020 showing and there would be big erosion in the AAP’s voter base.

What the exit polls predict.

In the 2020 assembly elections, the AAP won 62 seats and a vote share of 53.5%, the BJP won eight seats and 38.5% votes, and the Congress zero seats and 5% of the votes.

All but two exit polls predicted that the BJP will either clinch an outright majority in the assembly of 70 seats or come tantalisingly close to it. All but three exit polls suggested that the party, which last won the assembly elections in the Capital in 1993, will make a convincing comeback and trounce the AAP in many of the latter’s strongholds.

If these numbers hold on counting day, it will mean that the BJP maintained the momentum of the 2024 general elections when it swept all seven parliamentary seats in the Capital, and of its historic victory in Maharashtra three months ago. It will also mean that after two consecutive defeats in assembly elections in Delhi, the BJP finally forged a winning formula to win over a city where voters regularly switch preferences between national and state elections.

“This is a Modi wave. The people of Delhi want development just like in the rest of the country under PM Narendra Modi. The hard work put in by our party workers and the guidance of our leaders have reaped fruit…The BJP will cross the 50-seat mark,” said BJP leader Ramesh Bidhuri, who challenged chief minister Atishi from the Kalkaji seat.

In contrast, only two exit polls predicted that the AAP, which won landslide victories in 2015 and 2020, will keep control of the national capital. One exit poll predicted a neck-and-neck battle between the two principal opponents.

If these numbers tally on counting day, it will hold bad news for the fledgling party that was born out of an anti-corruption cauldron in 2011 but has struggled to shake off mounting charges of corruption in recent years, especially against party chief and main vote catcher, former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal. It will also mean that the party that once fancied itself as a national player will only be left with control of Punjab amid erosion in its traditional vote banks and a crisis potentially confronting the party.

“Exit polls always show the AAP getting fewer seats and when the actual results come, AAP gets bumper seats...for the fourth time, the people of Delhi will be making Arvind Kejriwal their CM,” said AAP leader Reena Gupta.

All exit polls were unanimous in their appraisal of the assembly polls as a bipolar contest, with the third player, the Congress, emerging as a minor force and predicted to win a maximum of two seats. “We have fought the elections well…we’ll wait for the 8th. The Congress that was thought to be nothing in Delhi has changed all equations,” said Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit, who challenged Kejriwal from the New Delhi assembly constituency.

The assembly polls in Delhi were the first electoral battle in 2025 and saw a closely fought campaign that was clearly divided on lines of class and gender, and largely stayed away from communal issues.

Despite the modest size of the electorate, Delhi has always commanded outsized heft on the national political stage due to the prestige associated with ruling the Capital and the fact that its population reflects the diversity of broader national demographics. But over the past five years, unprecedented acrimony between the elected state government and the lieutenant governor (LG) derailed local governance and plunged the Capital into a morass of toxic air, crumbling infrastructure, rising crime and policy dysfunction.

The elections were a referendum for the AAP, which spent the better part of the past five years battling corruption allegations that sent virtually its entire front line leadership behind bars. The AAP sought to train focus on its central welfare plank by offering a bouquet of 16 sops ranging from cash hand-outs to poor women to free treatment for all senior citizens. It sought to blunt anti-incumbency by dropping nearly a third of its incumbent lawmakers and challenging the opponents to come up with an alternative with its main face, Kejriwal.

Its principal challenger, the BJP is hoping to ride on anti-incumbency and middle-class anger to its first victory in the Capital in 27 years. The party failed to breach double digits in the last two assembly elections but was fancying its chances after stalled work across Delhi and crumbling civic infrastructure triggered palpable anger among ordinary people. It deployed a phalanx of central leaders led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi who hammered the AAP on corruption and misgovernance.

The party matched the AAP in welfare outreach and has talked up the tax breaks accorded to the middle-class in the Union Budget to secure its traditional vote bank. It will be hoping for some splintering in the AAP’s core base among poorer voters and marginalised castes.

The Congress ran a largely lukewarm campaign centered around the Gandhi family and the record of the then Sheila Dikshit government. The party has not won a single seat in the last two assembly elections but it can still make a difference in a tight contest, especially in seats with minority and marginalised caste voters.

Key to the outcome in Delhi will be demographics such as women, the poor, marginalised castes and middle-class colonies. Over the last 10 years, the AAP has maintained a stranglehold on the first three groups due to its governance delivery and welfare promises while the fourth is a loyal BJP voter base. This time, in fiercely fought elections, both major parties have made a play for these swing voters.

Over the last week, the political temperature has been rising with both the AAP and the BJP blaming each other over manipulation of electoral rolls, violation of the model code of conduct, and bribing voters.

Among the issues that are likely to play on the voters’ minds, welfare, corruption, the condition of civic infrastructure and gang-related crimes. But these elections will also bookend a bruising five years for the Capital, which has been beset by communal strife, crime, infrastructure collapse and repeated clashes between two arms of the government that has hamstrung Delhi.

Governance of the national capital is split between the elected state government, which is in charge of all areas except land, law and order (known as reserved subjects), which are in turn under the Centre’s control. The new government will have to navigate this complex governance terrain all over again.