No one could exactly see the Congress tsunami in naxal-infested Chhattisgarh. Final results show Congress winning as many as 67 seats out of of 90 decimating BJP to just 15. All exit polls had predicted big victory for Congress in Rajasthan and severe drubbing for BJP's Maharani Vasundhara Raje led party. She was projected as arrogant, totally cut-off from masses. But final results are not as bad for BJP. Infact. Congress has just secured a bare majority and BJP doing relatively better. Even, the exit polls for Telangana are wide of the mark. No poll except India Today-Axis could see the strong way in favour of Chandrasekhar Rao's (KCR) Telangana Rashtra Samithi.
The exit polls for Madhya Pradesh have somewhat, got on right track. All polls except Times Now-CNX, were predicting a close fight. And final results showed a see-saw race till the end and no party getting a clear majority (till 7 PM).
This not first time the exit polls in India have gone too erratic.There have been several instances in the past when exit polls were way off the mark. The most wild was in 2004 Lok Sabha polls when every exit poll was giving a majority to the Atal Bihari Vajyapee led NDA government. The average of all exit polls gave 256 for Vajaypee headed NDA and 183 for Congress led UPA.The actual results were quite contrary. UPA secured 237 seats and NDA just 187. The aggressive "India Shining"BJP campaign didn't click. In 2014, exit polls couldn't see the Modi wave. No exit poll could predict BJP getting absolute majority on its own. Almost all exit polls were giving Congress led UPA anything between 100 to 120 and NDA between 261 to 289. And final results were NDA getting 336 and UPA reduced to just 60.
During UP Assembly Elections in 2017, ruling Samajwadi party and Congress had stitched an alliance to beat the Modi wave . All exit polls had predicted a hung assembly in Uttar Pradesh, with BJP emerging as the largest party. However, all the exit polls proved wrong and the BJP surprised everyone by winning over 300 seats, way above what exit polls had predicted.
In 2015 Bihar assembly election 2015: All Exit polls predicted a photo-finish with no clear majority to any alliance. However, in actual result the RJD-JDU-Congress scored a thumping victory with Lalu Prasad's RJD emerging as the single largest party.
Remember the Delhi assembly elections soon after parliament polls in Feb. 2017. All exit polls were proved wrong. None of them predicted a "tsunami" verdict. All exit polls had given AAP a clear majority and only one gave AAP more than 50 seats.
Now question is: Why are exit polls way of the mark? Human mind is too diicult to read. Brain is such a complex system with 100 billion neurons and 800 trillion connections. Even worse is that it is not a static system: the brain is dynamic and god knows what number of chemical & electrical activities rise, thunder, and roar every second.
Though Nowadays recording a single neuron activity (or several of them simultaneously) is made possible by the science but researchers say there is no technique as to precisely to record even a major part of it. Given its complexity, how come that a random sampling of few votres can precict human behavior accurately? That too in a country where samples are so heterogeneous and varied, vertically and horizontally divided into so many groups, castes and incomes. That's why most of exit polls go haywire.
(Chander Sharma )