- Going by the look of things, any state election of late in India is turning out to be completely different from the expected outcome. Look how the exit poll pundits are eating humble pie while going horribly wrong in predicting the electoral outcomes. We have witnessed this trend over the last few elections, including the Parliamentary polls. The latest election result that completely made a fool out of poll pundits is the Haryana state assembly outcome. While every pollster predicted a landslide victory for the Grand Old Party after ten years of BJP rule, the eventual result went in favour of the ruling dispensation despite fighting anti-incumbency. The moot point to ponder over here is why people are making poll experts look like complete novices.
PC: Free Press Journal
- The reason is simple. People are the real kings in a democratic system of governance is a universal truth. The very definition of by the people, for the people, and of the people in choosing elected representatives is gaining further traction with the citizens exercising their franchise uninhibitedly. The lesson for the political class is that people can no longer be taken for granted nor can they be hoodwinked by merely bandying about promises, assurances, caste equations, and inducements tinged with parochial considerations. In a way, these unexpected outcomes in an electoral game should compel the political parties to be serious about their plans to offer able administration.
- Thus, the subject tagline gets automatically eliminated because each poll is proving to be different from the predictions. As such, it is misplaced to find clues to other state elections in J&K and Haryana outcomes. Yes, BJP’s triumph in Haryana is a big boost after the below-par outcome in the Lok Sabha polls. Congress’s loss is a big dampener. General elections are said to be an aggregation of state polls. The 2024 LS polls certainly bore that out as you know. But the same way results of the December state elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana, and Chhattisgarh – the last round of state polls ahead of an LS election – have had little bearing on the outcome of LS polls in April/May of the year after, so it is with state polls.
PC: The Economic Times
- Can the Haryana vote impact Maharashtra’s, or Jharkhand’s? Will NC’s triumph in J&K help the INDI alliance performance in Maharashtra? The impact of state poll outcomes on other state polls is academic virgin territory. What’s certain is that since the emergence of state parties that focus on sovereign issues, there’s no perceptible commonality between different rounds of state elections, even when BJP or Congress are in the fray. Whatever parameters on which they arrive at their choice, voters do not influence choices in other states. It’s unlikely that outcomes in Maharashtra or Jharkhand will sway the Delhi vote. Commonalities between state elections are far and few, what matters are the differentiators between parties and blocs. People are smart.
