The electronic voting machines will declare the winners on Wednesday, but pollsters made hay during the current assembly elections despite glaring failures in the past in the absence of any credible barometer of public opinion.
Even as most exit polls and surveys predict a comeback for the Congress in Delhi and power slipping from the hands of Digvijay Singh in Madhya Pradesh and a close contest in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, the glaring failure in poll predictions in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal just two years ago have once again put a question mark on the accuracy of results this time.
"Most of them are nothing more than commercial talk shops that have to cater to filling time and space in 24 hour news channels," says communications expert Dr N Bhaskar Rao, chairman of the Centre for Media Studies, attributing the failure in poll predictions to lack of scientific approach in conducting the exercise in many cases.
Many a psephologist admit to having made mistakes in the past but are quick to add that they have factored contentious issues and have steered clear of making sweeping predictions this time.
{{/usCountry}}Many a psephologist admit to having made mistakes in the past but are quick to add that they have factored contentious issues and have steered clear of making sweeping predictions this time.
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