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.)

Song Politics

Correspondent
Dec 9, 2025
2 min read

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address to a special sitting of the Lok Sabha to mark 150 years of Vande Mataram predictably turned into an exercise in political combat with the Opposition, primarily the Congress. Few cultural artefacts in India carry as heavy a historical charge as Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s hymn. To invoke it is to summon the romance of the freedom struggle, the fury of partition politics and the enduring anxieties of national identity in a single breath.

In Modi’s opening flourish, he remarked that when Vande Mataram turned 50, India was in colonial bondage; at 100, it was under Emergency. Now, as the song completes 150 years, the nation has a chance to “restore its glory.” This neat chronology was meant to burnish the Bharatiya Janata Party’s self-image as the custodian of national revival.

The Prime Minister then recalled Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s opposition to Vande Mataram in 1937, Jawaharlal Nehru’s caution that the song might “irritate Muslims,” and the Congress Working Committee’s decision that year to limit its official use. In Modi’s telling, this was not just an attempt at communal accommodation but an original sin of appeasement - the first “fragmentation” of the national song that eventually led by inexorable logic to the Partition of India.

The controversy over Vande Mataram arose because its imagery, drawn from Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s 19^th century novel Anandamath, blended patriotism with religious symbolism that some Muslims found exclusionary. Gandhi himself admired the song’s emotional force but also worried about coercion in matters of conscience. India’s freedom movement was rarely ideologically tidy; it was a series of uneasy bargains stitched together under pressure.

Modi’s speech was also less about historiography than about present politics. By invoking Bengal - Bankim’s home and a State inching towards a key electoral contest - he signalled a renewed cultural courtship of the eastern frontier, where his party still struggles for dominance. Reviving Vande Mataram is also a bid to resonate with a Bengali electorate that takes fierce pride in its literary inheritance.

The retort by the Opposition and many others that Parliament should spend more time to debate pollution and the ongoing IndiGo crisis has struck a nerve. Fewer than 10 percent of Indians can recite the song in full, even as politicians wrap themselves in its symbolism. Against a ledger of urgencies like the air choking Delhi, a day-long debate on a national hymn can look like indulgence.

Still, it would be wrong to dismiss the moment entirely as spectacle. Vande Mataram did animate India’s revolutionaries; men did indeed walk to the gallows with its refrain on their lips. Its revival speaks to a deeper desire to reconnect nationalism with sacrifice rather than entitlement. The real discomfort is not that Vande Mataram is being invoked, but that it is being invoked without equivocation.

For the first time in decades, the anthem of revolt is no longer being murmured as heritage, but asserted as inheritance.

The Exit Poll Mirage

Song Politics

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