The Exit Poll Mirage

While exit polls sketch a dramatic map of India’s electoral mood, the line between projection and verdict remains perilously thin. With the ballots across five politically pivotal arenas of West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Assam, Kerala and Puducherry falling silent until the results are announced on May 4, poll surveyors have filled the vacuum with exit poll numbers that excite, alarm and often mislead. These projections have already begun shaping narratives well before D-Day on May 4. If India’s...

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While exit polls sketch a dramatic map of India’s electoral mood, the line between projection and verdict remains perilously thin. With the ballots across five politically pivotal arenas of West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Assam, Kerala and Puducherry falling silent until the results are announced on May 4, poll surveyors have filled the vacuum with exit poll numbers that excite, alarm and often mislead. These projections have already begun shaping narratives well before D-Day on May 4. If India’s electoral history offers any lesson, it is that exit polls illuminate trends, not truths. Bengal’s Brinkmanship Nowhere is the drama more intense than in West Bengal, arguably the most keenly watched contest among all five arenas. The contest for its 294 seats has long transcended the state’s borders, becoming a proxy for national ambition. Most exit polls now point to a striking possibility of a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) majority, in some cases a commanding one. Such an outcome would mark a political earthquake. For decades, Bengal has resisted the BJP’s advances, its politics shaped instead by regional forces - first the Left Front, then Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC). Yet the arithmetic of the polls suggests that the BJP’s campaign built on organisational muscle and the promise of ‘parivartan’ (change) may have finally breached that wall. The TMC, meanwhile, appears to be grappling with anti-incumbency and persistent allegations of corruption. Still, one outlier poll suggests it could yet retain power, a reminder that Bengal’s electorate has a habit of confounding linear predictions. Here, more than anywhere else, the gap between projection and reality may prove widest. Steady Script If Bengal is volatile, the Assam outcome looks fairly settled. Across agencies, there is near unanimity that the BJP-led alliance is poised not just to retain power, but to do so comfortably. With the majority mark at 64 in the 126-member assembly, most estimates place the ruling coalition well above that threshold, in some cases approaching triple digits. The opposition Congress alliance, by contrast, appears stranded far behind. Under Himanta Biswa Sarma, the BJP has fused development rhetoric with a keen sense of identity politics, crafting a coalition that has proved resilient. A third consecutive term would underline the party’s deepening institutional hold over the state. Kerala, by contrast, may be returning to its old rhythm. For decades, the state has alternated power between the Left Democratic Front (LDF) and the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) with metronomic regularity. The LDF broke that pattern in the last election, securing an unprecedented second term. Exit polls now suggest that experiment may be short-lived. Most projections place the UDF comfortably above the 71-seat majority mark in the 140-member assembly, with the LDF trailing significantly. If borne out, this would reaffirm Kerala’s instinctive resistance to prolonged incumbency. Governance records matter here, but so does a deeply ingrained political culture that treats alternation as a form of accountability. Familiar Duel? Tamil Nadu, long dominated by its Dravidian titans, shows little appetite for disruption as per most exit polls, which place M.K. Stalin’s DMK-led alliance above the halfway mark of 118 in the 234-seat assembly. Yet, some sections have suggested a possible upset could be staged by actor Vijay’s TVK, the wildcard in the Tamil Nadu battle. Most polls, however, are clear that the opposition AIADMK alliance, though competitive, seems unlikely to unseat the incumbent DMK. In Puducherry, the smallest of the five contests, the implications may nonetheless be outsized. Exit polls give the BJP-led alliance a clear majority in the 30-seat assembly, relegating the Congress-led bloc to a distant second. Numerically modest, the result would carry symbolic weight. A victory here would further entrench the BJP’s presence in the south, a region where it has historically struggled to gain ground. For all their allure, exit polls are imperfect instruments. They rest on limited samples, extrapolated across vast and diverse electorates. In a country where millions vote, the opinions of a few thousand can only approximate reality and often fail to capture its nuances. There is also the problem of the ‘silent voter’ - individuals who either conceal their preferences or shift them late. Recent elections have offered ample reminders. In states such as Haryana and Jharkhand, and even in Maharashtra where margins were misjudged, exit polls have erred, and sometimes dramatically sp. Moreover, the modern exit poll is as much a media event as a methodological exercise. Packaged with graphics, debates and breathless commentary, it fills the void between voting and counting with a sense of immediacy that may be more theatrical than analytical. That said, to dismiss them entirely would be too easy. Exit polls do serve a purpose in sketching broad contours, highlighting regional variations and offering clues about voter sentiment. For political parties, they are early signals and act as tentative guides for observers. Taken together, this cycle’s exit polls suggest a broad, if tentative, pattern of the BJP consolidating in the east and north-east, and opposition alliances regaining ground in parts of the south, and continuity prevailing in key states. But patterns are not outcomes and only counted votes confer legitimacy. It is only on May 4 when the sealed electronic voting machines will deliver that clarity. They will determine whether Bengal witnesses a political rupture or a resilient incumbent, whether Assam’s stability holds, whether Kerala’s pendulum swings back, and whether Tamil Nadu stays its course. (The writer is a senior journalist and political analyst. Views personel.)

Bondi Blindness

Correspondent
Dec 15, 2025
2 min read

The Bondi Beach shooting in Sydney, Australia where fifteen people were killed at a Hanukkah gathering by a father and son later linked to Islamic State should have left no room for ambiguity. It an act of Islamist terrorism, not a policy puzzle. The facts were as plain as can be. Yet, Australia’s response, like that of much of the liberal West to similar attacks, immediately drifted towards safer abstractions and away from the ideology that drove the violence.

Instead of addressing the elephant in room that is Islamic fundamentalism, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s call for “tougher gun laws” was yet another classic instance of intellectual evasion.

This evasion has now become systemic. Even after the 9/11 attacks, instead of learning any hard lessons, jihadist violence across the Western ‘liberal’ world is endlessly contextualised, softened and relativised. Antisemitism is reclassified as grievance. Islamism is dissolved into sociology. Naming the ideology behind attacks is treated as impolite, and even dangerous. Liberalism, anxious not to offend the ‘religion of peace,’ has trained itself not to see.

Small wonder that media reports in such countries contort themselves to avoid even stating the perpetrator’s religion.

That moral timidity has had consequences. After October 7, 2023, Hamas’s massacre of Israeli civilians should have ended all pretence. Instead, large parts of the liberal commentariat rushed to explain, excuse or even celebrate it. Hamas was rebranded as ‘resistance’ against ‘fascist Zionism’ while antisemitic chants were waved through as political expression.

The same blindness governs the West’s indulgent treatment of Pakistan. India’s Foreign Minister S. Jaishanker once remarked that Pakistan’s GDP is measured by its exports of terrorism. Western liberals objected to the phrasing while ignoring the substance. From Mumbai in 2008 to a long trail of attacks and plots since, Pakistan’s entanglement with militant groups is one of the least disputed facts in contemporary security analysis. Yet Western capitals continue to court Islamabad when convenience demands it, lowering moral standards to fit strategic need. Even leaders otherwise hostile to liberal pieties have played along.

At the same time, a crude false equivalence is imposed on India. Hinduism, a civilisational faith without a history of global violent proselytization, is routinely yoked to Islamist extremism. Narendra Modi is denounced as a ‘fascist’ with mechanical certainty, while jihadist movements are discussed in the language of context and care. This is not moral symmetry but intellectual fraud.

The post-Bondi debate has already descended into irrelevancies. Was the younger attacker Australian-born? Did the father arrive decades ago on a student visa? Did welfare payments play a role? These questions are distractions. Citizenship is not a vaccine against extremism. Integration is not a bureaucratic status but a moral contract, one that the liberal West has been reluctant to enforce. And each time such ‘liberal’ societies downgrade ideology and avert their gaze, they ensure that the next lesson will be delivered the same violent way as the last.

The Exit Poll Mirage

Bondi Blindness

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