Exit polls forecast dark days for Mulayam

LUCKNOW: Exit polls may not pass the grade on the anvil of serious psephology.

But during the course of Indian elections, they do manage to shock, cheer or serve as a weather cock which would at least tell all interested parties the direction of the wind if not its velocity, effect or after-effect. Even so, the Star News exit poll after the third phase of voting in the UP election on Wednesday would definitely come as a major shock to UP’s redoubtable political wrestler Mulayam Singh Yadav. The exit poll puts the Samajwadi Party’s tally at 12 out of the 57 seats which went to the hustings on Wednesday. 

The SP had won 25 of these seats in the 2002 Assembly election when Mulayam was not even in power. Interestingly enough, the SP’s 2002 tally was higher than the BJP (11), BSP (9) and Congress (4) put together.

With a 30 per cent Muslim voter base, Ruhelkhand was indeed Mulayam’s fiefdom. But the bad news coming from this area this time is that the Muslims did not vote en masse for Mulayam as they did in 2002. And if Mulayam loses here, he loses his chance to rule UP again.

What would have come as a major disappointment to him is the 46 per cent polling in his own constituency (Gunnaur in Bijnore) compared to the windfall (about 90 per cent) in the 2003 by-elections.

The channel’s overall projection for Mulayam’s SP is even more alarming — a mere 92 of the total 403 seats — which means the party which has ruled the state for over three years is not even striking a century. (The SP won 144 seats in 2002.) The exit poll gives 138 to BSP as the single largest party and 107 to BJP. This is the lowest mark for SP compared to all other exit polls.

NDTV exit poll had given the SP 105-115 and the BSP 120-130, the Rashtriya Sahara predicted 131-141 for SP and 124-134 for BSP, The Week 127-137 for SP and 121-131 for BSP, and the Indian Express 145-155 for SP and 140-150 for BSP.

These predictions were done before the electorate had actually gone out to vote.

Even then, there was no doubt that the BSP was indeed neck and neck with the SP. The scenario has drastically changed after three phases of polling. 

In the first two phases, the SP didn’t have much expectation. Both the phases in west UP saw a fight between the BJP and the Rashtriya Lok Dal, with an emergence of the BSP, while the SP was nowhere in the contest.

The cumulative effect of those two phases also bogged down the SP in the third phase.