Pradeep Gupta, Chairman and Managing Director of Axis My India, broke down as his projections fell short of their mark on June 4 as the counting for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections progressed.
As of 5:00 pm, the BJP-led NDA is leading in 296 seats, which is way short of the ‘400 paar’ target being aimed by the BJP. The party also fell short of its target of 370 seats in the Lok Sabha elections.
The saffron party saw a subdued performance in Uttar Pradesh with a lead of only 36 seats, which is nowhere close to its clean sweep aim of 80 seats in the state. The striking factor is that the saffron party is trailing in the Faizabad constituency where the Ram Temple was inaugurated this year.
Explaining the debacle in Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Maharashtra where the pollsters went wrong, the psephologist said BJP performed lower than the predictions in these three states, and the Dalit votes played key roles, in favour of the INDIA bloc.
“We predicted 361-401 seats for the NDA, which suggests the NDA is likely to form the government. But the tally as of this point is 295. This means we are behind our lower range by 66 seats. For this, there are three states which we should look into,” Pradeep Gupta said in a discussion with India Today TV.
“In Uttar Pradesh, we predicted a lower range of about 67 seats, but at this point, the NDA has secured 38 seats. Therefore, we are down by exactly 30 seats. In West Bengal, we predicted 26 to 32 seats for the BJP, but they obtained only 11 seats, resulting in a difference of 15 seats from our prediction. Similarly, in Maharashtra, the prediction was 28 seats for the NDA, but they received 20 seats, which is 8 seats less than expected. These three seats account for the difference of 60 seats,” he added.
Gupta said, “We were completely wrong here, and we need to introspect on what went wrong”.
In contrast, the INDIA bloc’s performance was a complete stunner compared to the exit poll projections with the alliance leading in 230 seats, while others were leading in 17 seats.
Almost all exit polls projected a huge majority for the NDA, estimating they will win between 350 and 415 seats. Axis My India forecasted 361-401 seats for the NDA, which is more than what they achieved in 2019.
As per the projections, Axis My India predicts the BJP will win 26-31 seats in Bengal, 11-12 in Telangana, and 18-20 in Odisha. BJP is expected to retain nearly the same number of seats in Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, and Maharashtra. In Maharashtra, the BJP won 23 seats in 2019, but this time it is projected to get 20-22 seats. However, the NDA’s total in Maharashtra may drop from 41 in 2019 to 28-32, losing about 10 seats.