After 4 misses, people wary of TN exit polls

History would suggest that punters and pundits have had a very poor strike rate in the state, at least for over a decade. Even a buoyant DMK, which has been tipped to win most of 39 seats, has been understandably mellowed down in its response to the post-poll predictions this time. Rightly so. 

For, poll predictions had bombed big time for a mind boggling four times since 2004. The most recent failed forecast being the 2016 Assembly elections in which a good number of pollsters had predicted the political equilibrium to tip in favour of the DMK. Conversely, not only were they disproved but former AIADMK general secretary J Jayalalithaa rewrote history by forming consecutive government, only person to do so since the days of her mentor MGR and that too a couple of years after suffering a conviction in the DA case.

The 2014 Lok Sabha elections was another instance when the electorate proved the pollsters wrong. Hardly a pundit had predicted a sweep (AIADMK won 37 of the 39 seats) by the AIADMK, but it did. The Lok Sabha elections of 2009 was a curious case in point given that the DMK-Congress combine was facing maximum heat from Tamil nationalist constituency during the peak of Eelam war. 

The Congress-DMK combine won over a third of the seats (18 + 8 + 1 seats) despite facing the Eelam heat. Though the DMK had the TESMA-ESMA fame AIADMK regime’s unpopularity behind it in 2004, a clean sweep of 39 seats by UPA-I was far from what the pundits had predicted then. Perhaps, the recurring inconsistency of pollsters, aside from the national scenario projected in favour of Modi regime now, were feared to have contributed to DMK’s lack of enthusiasm. 

However, the unreliability of surveys and indifference of DMK has not discouraged a few analysts from predicating a trend based on the exit polls.

Political analyst Ravindran Doraisamy said, “Exit poll is a heterogenous entity. Some may come true. Some may not. Overall, exit polls denote a trend. We can conclude from multiple exit polls that the trend is for Modi across India and DMK-Congress combine in TN.”

“We cannot summarily discredit exit polls. It should be viewed on a case by case basis. In 2006, Yogendra Yadav predicted 10 per cent for Vijayakant, he secured 8 per cent voter share. In 2016, no one predicted Jayalalithaa’s return to power. But the difference between DMK and AIADMK was only one per cent and DMK won over 50 per cent of its seats. We cannot discredit it just because she returned to power,” he said, suggesting that the tally of Modi’s BJP could increase or reduce a bit, but the trend is in Modi’s favour.