New Delhi: The results for the Delhi MCD Elections were announced on December 7. While Aam Aadmi Party won with a clean sweep, the exit polls presented a bit different picture. The exit polls showed 149-171 wards for AAP while the party won the elections with 134 wards. The exit polls rightly predicted the clean sweep, but BJP did not perform as poorly as predicted.
MCD Elections Final Result 2022
AAP has won 134 wards out of 250 while BJP has won 104. While more than 150 seats were expected from AAP and the prediction said that BJP would not be able to cross 100, it did not happen. Meanwhile, Congress has won in 9 wards.
MCD Elections Exit Polls 2022
The India Today Group in their exit poll predicted 149-171 wards for AAP and 69-91 wards for BJP.
#IndiaTodayExactPoll | 20% is too good for AAP to start with in Gujarat: @AxisMyIndia chairman & MD @PradeepGuptaAMI | #GujaratElections #ExitPolls | @PreetiChoudhry @RahulKanwal @SardesaiRajdeep pic.twitter.com/sDpLdoMUux
— IndiaToday (@IndiaToday) December 5, 2022
Meanwhile, Congress and others were said to win 3-7 and 5-9 wards respectively. The exit polls showed AAP leading in all regions of the city, except for North-east Delhi where BJP stood as the leader. The predictions said that AAP will get a huge victory like BJP won 181 out of 270 wards in 2017.
@AxisMyIndia @IndiaToday Exact #ExitPoll Dec’22@PradeepGuptaAMI @aajtak @anjanaomkashyap @rahulkanwal @sudhirchaudhary @sardesairajdeep pic.twitter.com/P4ODFqJhZT
— Axis My India (@AxisMyIndia) December 5, 2022
A similar trend in 2017: MCD election results
While the 2017 elections differed slightly from the MCD elections in 2022 in terms of the number of votes and voter turnouts, the exit polls showed a similar trend but in favour of the BJP. While the exit polls were correct in predicting the winners each time, the numbers are the dimension where to went wrong. The results showed 181 wards for BJP and 48 for AAP. While Congress won in 30 wards.
MCD Elections Exit Polls 2017
In 2017, the India Today Group 202 to 2020 wards for BJP while just 23-35 for AAP. The Congress got 19-31 while the others got 2-8 seats in the exit polls. Only Congress was within the range predicted in the exit polls.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it can be said that exit polls know the public sentiments to predict the trend and the winner, however, they do not present an accurate picture. This also does not mean that exit polls were misleading, rather they were not fully accurate.