Exit Polls: The seventh and last phase of the Lok Sabha elections 2024 is going to be held tomorrow i.e. Saturday (01 June). Voting will start from the morning and by the end of the voting, the exit poll results will start running on TV channels. Although the Election Commission will declare the actual election results on June 4, but the exit polls will start estimating which party is forming the government and how many seats it will win in which state.
There are many companies in the country and the world that do exit polls and election surveys. Different agencies will present their figures to the people of the country and then these will be matched with the actual election results. The exit poll whose figures match with these results is considered correct. Amidst all this, people have many questions in their minds as to how these exit polls are conducted, what is its history in India and how accurate are their figures? Let us try to find answers to these questions.
How did exit polls start in India?
First of all, let us know about its beginning. This trend started in India from foreign countries. As far as India is concerned, it started in the year 1957. Lok Sabha Elections This happened during 1980. An election survey was conducted at that time. This survey was conducted by the Indian Institute of Public Opinion. After this, surveys were also conducted during 1980 and 1984.
Formally, the exit poll was first started in the year 1996, which was conducted by the Center for the Study of Developing Society (CSDS) for Doordarshan. In this exit poll, it was told that a particular party will win the election and the same happened. After which the trend of exit polls increased in the country. Then when private channels came into existence, for the first time in the year 1998, an exit poll was conducted for a private channel.
How are exit polls conducted?
First of all, let us understand the meaning of this word. Exit means to go out, from this word we can understand that the opinion of the voter who has come out to vote is taken about which party or which candidate and for which issues he has voted. For this, different agencies station their workers outside the polling booth and find out what is the mood of the public. This is also a kind of survey.
Usually, every 10th person at the polling booth or every 20th person if the polling booth is large is asked questions. Agencies station their workers at the polling booths because it is fresh in the mind of the voter as to which candidate he has voted for.
Analysis is done based on the information received from voters, and then an attempt is made to predict what the election results might be.
How accurate are the exit poll figures?
Now the question arises that how accurate are the exit poll figures. There is no guarantee that the results of the exit polls will be correct. In this regard, Professor Sanjay Kumar, a famous election analyst and co-director of CSDS-Lokniti, tried to explain by giving an example in a program that it can be understood in this way that the exit poll estimates are like the weather department forecast. Sometimes they are absolutely correct, sometimes almost correct and sometimes the situation is completely opposite.
He explains that two things are estimated in exit polls, one is vote percentage, second is the number of seats that the parties will get based on the vote percentage. Along with this, he also reiterates that those who believe in exit polls should not forget that in 2004, all the exit polls showed the BJP forming the government but the exact opposite happened.
