Zero Seats, Big impact? Exit Polls On The Prashant Kishor Factor

In the lead-up to the Bihar Assembly elections, poll strategist-turned-politician Prashant Kishor kept repeating one sentence about the prospects of his Jan Suraaj Party - "arsh pe ya farsh pe" (either sky high or on the floor), meaning it would either do really well or really badly.

Exit polls after the second phase of voting in the state have put the party firmly on the floor, at least in terms of the number of seats won.

Health warning: Exit polls often get it wrong.

All nine exit polls that have come out so far - Dainik Bhaskar, Matrize, People's Insight, Peoples Pulse, JVC, P-Marq, Chanakya Strategies, DV Research, and TIF research - have predicted a clear win for the ruling NDA, a loss for the opposition Mahagathbandhan and an absolute shocker for the Jan Suraaj Party, which was envisioned by Kishor as a third alternative for the state.

The exit pollsters have all opted for ranges, and what will hurt the Jan Suraaj Party the most is that seven of them have started the range with zero, predicting that it could fail to open its account despite contesting nearly all of Bihar's 243 constituencies - the most, by far, of any party.

Peoples Pulse has predicted a range of 0-5, the highest upper limit of any of the seven, Dainik Bhaskar 0-3, People's Insight 0-2, Matrize 0-2 and JVC 0-1. The outliers are P-Marq, which has said the party is likely to win a minimum of one seat and a maximum of four, DV research, which has gone for a minimum of two and a maximum of four, and Chanakya Strategies and TIF research, both of which have said the party will win zero seats.

NDTV's Poll Of Exit Polls, which is an aggregate of the predictions, suggests the BJP-JDU-led NDA will win 147 seats - well over the majority mark of 122 - the RJD-Congress-led Mahagathbandhan will be restricted to just 90 - 20 lower than its 2020 tally of 110 - and the Jan Suraaj Party will get just 1.

Bihar has seen record-high voting percentages of 64.67 and 68.76 in both phases, and the Mahagathbandhan and Jan Suraaj Party would have been hopeful that this would be indicative of anti-incumbency. The exit polls and experts suggest this has not been the case.

Vote Share Impact?

The exit polls indicate that while the Jan Suraaj Party will not make an impact in terms of constituencies won, it will win a not-negligible percentage of votes. The bad news for the Mahagathbandhan is that most of this vote share is likely to come from its constituents and barely any from the NDA.

Experts said whatever little anti-incumbency vote was there in Bihar has, thus, possibly split between the Mahagathbandhan and Prashant Kishor's party, hurting the opposition.

Some experts also emphasised, however, that the party is only a year old and it is difficult for a new organisation to find its footing in Bihar, where even the regional parties don't contest all 243 constituencies and depend on others to form a government.