The voting for the Lok Sabha elections will conclude on June 1 with 58 constituencies across 7 states and 1 union territory polling in the final phase.
Many people will be glued to their TV sets on June 1, as news channels will start airing poll predictions after voting hours.
It is believed that exit polls indicate the probable outcome. To some extent, exit polls suggest which party or alliance is likely to form the government after the results are declared.
What are exit polls and how are they prepared?
Exit polls are a type of election survey conducted on the day of polling.
Survey agencies gauge the mood of voters using tools like questionnaires, face-to-face interviews, and telephonic interviews. Since not all voters are surveyed, a considerable sample size is chosen.
This sample size is selected to ensure the survey's outcome can be generalised to the larger population.
Exit polls are not released after every phase to avoid influencing the remaining polling. If elections are conducted in multiple phases, the results of the exit polls are revealed after the polling for the final phase.
According to Election Commission guidelines, no person is allowed to conduct any exit poll and publish or publicize the results by print, electronic media, or in any other manner while voting is ongoing.
Though people rely on exit polls for accurate projections, survey agencies often face criticism for only revealing projected seat numbers without projecting the vote share.
Sometimes, pollsters do not even provide the methodology used for the survey or the sample size on which it was conducted.
In India, multiple survey agencies conduct and publish/publicise opinion polls and exit polls, but only a few are trusted for their accuracy.
It cannot be ignored that on many occasions, exit polls have failed to be accurate or to come close to the actual results on counting day.
Popular exit polls
Some well-known organisations that conduct exit polls include India Today-Axis, CNN News 18-IPSOS, Times Now-VMR, Republic-Jan Ki Baat, Republic-CVoter, NewsX-NETA, and Today's Chanakya, among others.
What is a poll of polls?
The poll of polls is a projection obtained by averaging the projected seats from various pollsters.
Some news organisations, like NDTV, do not conduct independent surveys. Instead, they come up with projections by averaging those of other organizations and attributing the figures to all the pollsters.
