Assembly Elections 2017: Exit polls predict pole position for BJP

Big gambles generate big wins. Or big losses. Unfortunately, a slew of exit poll results announced on Thursday suggest the big bets placed by three key leaders – Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav – in the recently held Assembly elections may not pay off as handsomely as hoped for.  

Most of the polls predicted hung Houses in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa and Manipur; what makes the results important is that the elections are being viewed as a referendum on PM Modi's demonetization drive, as well as curtain-raiser to national elections in 2019.

However, two pollsters – News 24 Today’s Chanakya and India Today-Axis – broke from the pack, predicting a clear win for the Bharatiya Janata Party in UP,  the country’s most populous state that is often also seen as a barometer for the national mood. Exit polls done by Times Now-VMR placed BJP in a comfortable position in UP, giving it 190 to 210 seats. A party needs 202 seats for a simple majority in the state Assembly.  

Even if the BJP doesn’t reach that magic number, the SP and Congress’s hurriedly patched together alliance and the BSP will await March 11 with some trepidation as almost all exit polls have predicted huge gains for the BJP over the 2012 elections.

Back then, the BJP had managed a meagre 47 seats. However, in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, riding on the Modi wave, the BJP swept 73 of 80 seats; extrapolating that into Assembly segments translates into a thumping majority of about 328 seats out of 403 for the BJP.

The BJP has fought elections with Modi as its flag-bearer, forcing non-BJP incumbents in three states to raise their campaign pitch to match the PM electoral blitz.

Long seen as a party of upper castes, the BJP changed its strategy in UP, where it tried to form an alliance of non-Yadav OBCs and non-Jatav Dalits against the SP’s Yadav vote bank and BSP's Dalit vote bank. PM Modi himself belongs to the Other Backward Caste (OBC) category.

A victory for BJP in UP will mean a success for PM Modi's new strategy, and the party may feel encouraged to apply it elsewhere. The impact of such success could be far-reaching, transforming the BJP from an upper-caste-dominated party into one of lower castes and the poor, making it tougher for the Opposition to take it on nationally.

A BJP victory in UP would also put a stamp of approval on Modi’s continuing popularity and could well be the precursor of a bigger wave in the next Lok Sabha elections.

That UP was a petri dish for the BJP was evident early on: the party raised the stakes in nearly all states, but its investment in UP was visible from the get go, especially the PM and Cabinet ministers‘ electoral rallies. Modi addressed 23 rallies in the state over the seven-phase polls, staying put for a full three days in his Parliamentary constituency of Varanasi, where in-party squabbling had become rife.

A SP defeat in Uttar Pradesh could loosen Akhilesh Yadav's control over the party only weeks after winning a pitched battle for control with father Mulayam Singh Yadav and uncle Shivpal Yadav. His sidelined opponents, silent until now, will be sure to demand their respective pounds of flesh.

Most importantly, though, a big BJP win in the state could mar Rahul Gandhi's chances to become the party’s president. Despite Sonia Gandhi's health issues, many senior Congress leaders who feel sidelined by Rahul Gandhi might renew calls for her to continue leading the party. The party has so far been saving Rahul Gandhi from accountability for several electoral defeats, from the 2012 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections to recent civic body elections in Maharashtra and elsewhere.

The prospect of an existential crisis could well force the party to reconsider Rahul Gandhi's leadership. That, in turn, will likely mean the ascendancy of the other Gandhi scion, Priyanka, who is widely regarded as a political natural, with the ability to work with party leaders at different levels.

The exit polls also predict a photo-finish between the Aam Aadmi Party and the Congress in Punjab while relegating the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) -BJP combine to virtually single digit figures. In the 2012 Assembly elections, the SAD-BJP alliance had won 68 seats compared with 46 for the Congress.

AAP is expected to perform exceptionally well in Punjab as three out of four exit polls predict between 54 to 67 seats for the new kid on the block. AAP is expected to perform particularly strongly in rural areas afflicted with the drug menace. Opening a direct front against Akali Dal, AAP had fought Punjab elections on a single-point agenda of drug menace. Here again, only India TV-CVoter exit poll was the exception, giving a clear majority to the Congress with 62-71 seats.
 
All the three exit polls done in 40 seats Goa assembly predict a favourable result for the incumbent BJP by giving it 15 to 22 seats. Incidentally, AAP may not be able to repeat its expected Punjab performance in Goa. Only India New MRC poll has not written it off totally, by giving it 7 seats against BJP’s 15 and Congress’s 10.

But it is Manipur that may hold the biggest surprise for the BJP, a non entity in the state until recently, giving it a sizeable number of seats. Pollsters predict a close fight between the ruling Congress and the BJP, with the former getting 26 and the latter 24 in the 60-member assembly. Congress has been ruling the North Eastern state for the last 15 years.