Bicycles decorated with BJP flags and Narendra Modi's image are parked inside the BJP headquarters in New Delhi on May 12
New Delhi:
The BJP's
Narendra Modi is set to become India's next Prime Minister, exit polls showed on Monday, with his Opposition party and its allies forecast to sweep to a parliamentary majority.
Indian elections are notoriously hard to call, however. Pre-election opinion polls and post-voting exit polls both have a patchy record. (
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Research group C-Voter predicted 289 seats for the National Democratic Alliance headed by the BJP, with just 101 seats for the alliance led by the Congress party - which would be the ruling party's worst ever result. (
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C-Voter said its poll was based on a sample of 166,901 randomly selected respondents in all 543 seats up for election. The pollster said its margin of error is +\-3 percent at a national level. (
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Another poll, by Cicero for the India Today group, showed the NDA hitting between 261 and 283 seats. A majority of 272 is needed to form a government, although that is often achieved with outside support from regional parties. (
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Several national exit polls over-estimated the BJP's seat share in the last two general elections in 2004 and 2009. The ruling Congress party went on to form coalition governments on both occasions. (
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"We will only know if this 'Modi wave' has really happened after the election results," said Praveen Rai, a political analyst at the Delhi-based Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), who published a report on exit polls last month. "It still might be more of a media wave, a manufactured wave."
Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state and a crucial political battleground, is particularly tricky for pollsters to forecast because it is a caste-sensitive state where some voters are afraid to speak frankly about who they chose, said Rai.
Should Mr Modi fall short of a majority when the results come in on May 16, he will need to strike a coalition deal with regional parties.
Mr Modi, has electrified the lengthy contest with a media-savvy campaign that has hinged on vows to kickstart the economy and create jobs.
Yet much depends on the BJP winning enough seats to form a stable government that will allow him to push through his promised reforms.
© Thomson Reuters 2014