Bihar Exit Poll Results 2020 LIVE Updates: Pollsters including Today's Chanakya and ABP News-C Voter have predicted a landslide win for Tejashwi Yadav, with their demographic bifurcation of votes suggesting that Muslim-Yadav combine has stuck with RJD
Voters queued up to cast their ballots for Bihar Assembly elections at a polling station in Masaurhi. AFP
Bihar Election Exit Poll Results 2020 LIVE Updates
According to India Today-Axis My India exit polls, the Mahagathbandhan has been projected to win a comfortable majority. Here are the projected numbers.
Mahagathbandhan – 139-161
NDA – 69-91
LJP – 03-05
GDSF - 3-5
Others- 3-5
Bihar Election Exit Poll Results 2020 LIVE Updates
| Pollster | NDA | Mahagathbandhan | LJP | OTHERS |
| Republic-Jan ki Baat (till 6 pm) | >91-119 | 116-138 | 5-8 | 3-6 |
| Times Now-C Voter | 116 | 120 | 1 | 6 |
| ABP news-C Voter (5 pm) | 104-128 | 108-131 | 1-3 | 4-8 |
| Today's Chanakya* | 44-56 | 169-191 | 4-12 | |
| TV9 Bharatvarsh | 110-120 | 115-125 | 3-5 | 10-15 |
| Dainik Bhaskar | 120-127 | 71-81 | 12-23 | 19-27 |
| Today's Chanakya didn't release the independent figures for LJP | ||||
Bihar Election Exit Poll Results 2020 LIVE Updates
Speaking to CNN-news18 after a near-unanimous poor projection of NDA's performance by various pollsters, BJP leader Aprajita Sarangi said, "With the support of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Nitish Kumar government has done extremely well. These are not the real results."
Bihar Election Exit Poll Results 2020 LIVE Updates
ABP-C Voter, TV9 Bahartvarsh, Republic-Jan Ki Baat and Times Now C Voter surveys have given Mahagathbandhan a lead, but have also been inclined towards calling it a hung house in the knife-edge race.
Today's Chanakya's results are starkly different as the pollster has claimed that Tejashwi Yadav will become the next chief minister after a landslide win of 180 seats. NDA will be limited to around 55 seats.
Bihar Election Exit Poll Results 2020 LIVE Updates
A vote projection for Bihar election by Today’s Chanakya predicts that the BJP-JDU will be limited to 55 (plus-minus 11 seats), while Mahagathbandhan will come to power with a decisive 180 (plus-minus 11 seats). Others are expected to get 8 (plus-minus 4) seats.
Bihar Election Exit Poll Results 2020 LIVE Updates
The Today’s Chanakya survey also released a caste-wise break-up of voting pattern in this election. According to the survey, 60 percent upper caste respondents voted for the BJP-JDU, while 29 percent voted for Congress-RJD. It further said that 69 percent Yadavs voted for the RJD-Congress, while 22 percent picked BJP-JDU. Muslim voters also favoured the RJD-Congress as per the survey.
Bihar Election Exit Poll Results 2020 LIVE Updates
ABP News-C Voter survey, without giving the demographic break up of survey responders, said in its bulletin that millennials and first time voters have preferred Tejashwi over Nitish in these elections. The news channel said that contrary to what's deemed BJP's core constituency, the youth supported the mahagathbandhan this time, whereas more aged voters, who presumably were still around during the 15-year-long RJD rule have chosen to back Nitish despite some element of disenchantment and dispondency.
Likewise, India Today-Axis My India Exit Poll also reported that 47 percent of voters aged between 18 to 35 years back Tejashwi Yadav, while voters aged between 51 and above overwhelmingly wanted Nitish back in power.
Bihar Election Exit Poll Results 2020 LIVE Updates
Today’s Chanakya has started revealing its projections. The pollster has given the RJD and Congress-led grand alliance a majority share of the total votes at 44 percent in Bihar Assembly election, while the NDA will get 34 percent of vote share. Other parties, including Chirag Paswan’s LJP, received 22%, it predicted.
Bihar Election Exit Poll Results 2020 LIVE Updates
India Today-My Axis Poll, which is yet to reveal its final projections for the Bihar Assembly Election, has said that 44 percent of survey responders preferred Tejashwi Yadav as the next Bihar chief minister, while 35 percent want JDU’s Nitish Kumar to get anotehr term.
Bihar Election Exit Poll Results 2020 LIVE Updates
While the numbers predicted by each pollster varies, almost all exit poll surveys have agreed on one thing that the difference in vote share will not exceed 2-3 percent. This means that the fight for Bihar is expected to be a pitched battle between Opposition mahagathbandhan and ruling NDA. The ABP News-C Voter survey has given the Tejashwi-lead alliance 108-131 seat, and the magic number is firmly in the middle of that window. So the ball can roll either way.
Likewise, Republic jan Ki Baat has given RJD+ a clearer lead, but even it agrees that the Mahagathbandhan can stop short of the magic number by yeo seats.
All parties have their hats in the ring with feverish campaigns and an array of star campaigners including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav and AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi for the recently-formed Grand Secular Democratic Front.
Exit polls predictions will begin on television channels soon after polls close at 6 pm on Saturday evening. The exit polls will be key in deciphering early trends to project a winner — whether Nitish will be granted a fourth straight term in the Chief Minister's Office or whether the electorate are placing their faith in the "new wave" brought on by Tejashwi's leadership in the RJD.
However, it is important to note that while exit polls are based on the analysis of factors like previous voting patterns and voters' responses after they've cast their vote, it is only speculation about what the result could be. Results will be declared after the counting of votes scheduled for 10 November.
It is also possible for the exit polls predictions to be completely off the mark. "During the 2015 Bihar assembly elections, only one agency had managed to capture the mood in the state which overwhelmingly voted for an alliance led by chief minister Nitish Kumar with him coming to power for the third consecutive term," a Hindustan Times report said.
On Saturday, around 2.34 crore voters spread across 78 segments of the 243-strong Assembly will decide the fate of 1,204 candidates, including the Assembly Speaker Vijay Kumar Chaudhary, who seeks to a hat-trick in Sarairanjan, and 12 members of the state cabinet.
JD(U) ministers in the fray are Bijendra Prasad Yadav (Supaul), Narendra Narayan Yadav (Alamnagar), Maheshwar Hazari (Kalyanpur), Ramesh Rishideo (Singheshwar), Khurshid alias Firoz Ahmed (Sikta), Lakshmeshwar Roy (Laukaha), Bima Bharti (Rupauli) and Madan Sahni (Bahadurpur). Four ministers are in the fray from the BJP, including Pramod Kumar (Motihari), Suresh Sharma (Muzaffarpur), Binod Narayan Jha (Benipatti) and Krishnakumar Rishi (Banmankhi).
Meanwhile, Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora on Thursday said that the first two phases of the Bihar Assembly election had been completed "reasonably well" despite doomsday predictions by "extreme cynics" about holding the polls amid the pandemic.
He said the voter turnout on 28 October and 3 November was more compared to the corresponding constituencies in the 2015 Assembly polls and the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
At the inauguration of the International Virtual Election Visitors Programme, Arora said the poll panel tested the ground by first holding Rajya Sabha elections amid the pandemic. Enthused, it decided to go for Assembly polls in Bihar, he said.
"There was no dearth of sceptics, no dearth of cynics, no dearth of extreme cynics who were making doomsday predictions for us... But here we are so far in a reasonably good shape," he said.
Arora said Bihar elections have shown that election management bodies across the world can hold polls.
Due to the pandemic, nearly 60 countries had postponed polls. Later, countries including Sri Lanka, South Korea, Croatia, and Mongolia held elections.
The Election Commission does meticulous planning for all polls. But this time, the "new dimension" of created more challenges, the chief election commissioner said.
Arora told members of election management bodies from various countries who attended the programme that to ensure social-distancing norms, the number of voters per polling station in Bihar was reduced from 1,500 to 1000. This led to an increase in the number of polling stations by nearly 33,000.
Those aged 80 years and above, and those with disabilities were given the option of using a postal ballot. But most of them preferred to go to the polling booth to vote, he said.
Informing the participants that Bihar has had a history of caste tensions and communal issues, Arora said, "Most of it is (in the) past. But still, sometimes smoulderings can be observed."
With inputs from agencies
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