Pollster Axis My India released a report card Monday night of its projections for four of five Assembly elections held in April/May, including the headline-grabbing prediction about actor Vijay and his Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam securing a historic debut win in Tamil Nadu.
Earlier today Axis My India's Pradeep Gupta told NDTV people 'laughing' at his organisation when they predicted the TVK would win the Tamil Nadu election. "Across the country... all political pundits, observers, and other polling agencies were all laughing at Axis My India..."
But, as it turned out, Axis and Gupta had the last laugh.
Tamil Nadu
Axis, in fact, was the only polling agency that projected a victory for the TVK. Whereas others predicted a win for the ruling DMK or a comeback for its great Dravidian rival, the AIADMK, Axis said it saw the TVK winning 98-120 seats with a midpoint of 109 and a 35 per cent vote share.
And at 8 pm Vijay's party was on course to win 108 seat with a vote share of 34.9 per cent.
"This is the victory of data science," Gupta told NDTV.
READ | "They Were Laughing At Us For Predicting Vijay's Victory": Axis Chief To NDTV
Axis' other results were either similarly spot-on or in an acceptable ballpark.
The agency said the DMK-led alliance would win between 92 and 110 seats and 35 per cent of the vote share, and the MK Stalin-led bloc might end up with 74 seats and 32 per cent votes.
The AIADMK-BJP alliance outperformed Axis' expectations but not by much; the prediction was 22-32 seats and 23 per cent vote share. The result is likely 51 seats and 27 per cent votes.
Note, though, there is two per cent margin of error for vote share calculations.
Kerala, Puducherry
In both these elections Axis got the winning alliance right - the Congress-led UDF in Kerala and the BJP-backed All India NRC in Puducherry.
The UDF is set to win nine seats more than the predicted 78-90 band and pick up 47 per cent votes against the predicted 44 per cent. The AINRC, though, will win exactly as predicted; Axis gave the alliance between 16 and 20 of Puducherry's 30 seats, and it is set to get 18. Gupta's agency also predicted 40 per cent vote share and it is likely to pick up 39 per cent.
In both these elections Axis also got the runners-up correct.
In Kerala the CPIM-led Left front was expected to win only 49-62 seats and 39 per cent of the votes, and it will end up with 35 and 38 per cent. In Puducherry, the Congress-DMK alliance and the TVK were expected to get between six and eight and two and four, respectively.
They are on course to win exactly in the middle of the band - six and three seats.
Assam
Axis predicted 88-100 seat haul with a 48 per cent vote share for the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance in Assam. The NDA will likely end with 101 seats and exactly that amount of votes.
Behind it the Congress alliance was given 24-36 seats and 38 per cent of the votes, and will possibly end with 22 seats and 36 per cent of the votes.
Bengal
Axis had said it would not release exit poll figures for the Bengal election because voters were unwilling to talk to surveyors. "There is such an environment of fear... which is affecting the methodology of sampling and leaving them with incomplete data," Gupta had said.
In an exclusive interview, Gupta told NDTV: "We saw that when 70 to 80 per cent of people are not ready to talk to us. So the methodology of our sampling process is not working properly. So we have now decided that it would be better in such a situation that the poll is not announced".
READ | "Atmosphere Of Fear": Axis My India On Why It's Not Sharing Bengal Poll Data
Bengal was won by the BJP with a massive mandate; the party is on course to win over 200 of the state's 294 seats, allowing it to form its first ever government in the eastern state. The ruling party - Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool - was relegated to a distant second with 80 seats.
