The exit polls on Tuesday unanimously projected an emphatic victory for the ruling NDA in the Bihar Assembly elections, suggesting a strong pro-incumbency sentiment in favour of chief minister Nitish Kumar's two-decade-old government.
While exit polls have often produced mixed results, their record in Bihar has been particularly patchy.
In the 2020 Assembly elections, most surveys had forecast a narrow win for the Opposition Mahagathbandhan, but the NDA ultimately retained power. In 2015, the exit polls had gone completely off the mark, predicting a BJP-led NDA victory when the JDU-RJD-Congress alliance instead swept the state. At that time, Nitish had broken ranks with the BJP and joined the Grand Alliance.
If Tuesday's projections hold when votes are counted on Friday, it would mark a decisive rejection of the Mahagathbandhan’s call for badlav (change) led by RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav. It would also signal that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's high-profile Voter Adhikar Yatra and allegations of "vote theft" had failed to resonate with the electorate.
The polls painted a bleak picture for the Opposition. On average, the Mahagathbandhan was projected to win around 90 seats — well below the 110 it secured in 2020 — while the NDA was expected to bag about 147 seats in the 243-member Assembly.
Poll strategist turned politician Prashant Kishor's fledgling Jan Suraaj Party was predicted to make little impact, with estimates suggesting it could win anywhere between zero and five seats.
Axis My India and C-Voter said they would release their final projections on Wednesday, after incorporating data from the second and final phase of polling across 122 constituencies.
The Nitish government's pre-poll welfare push, including a one-time cash assistance of ₹10,000 for 1.25 crore women and a hike in social security pensions from ₹400 to ₹1,100 for widows, senior citizens and the disabled, appears to have played a crucial role in blunting anti-incumbency sentiment, the exit poll data indicated.
The BJP had mounted a high-decibel campaign warning voters against the return of "Jungle Raj", a phrase used to describe the lawlessness during the Lalu-Rabri regime.
The exit polls predicted that the two main constituents of the Mahagathbandhan — the RJD and the Congress — would get fewer seats than the 2020 elections.
In the NDA, the Nitish-led JDU was projected to bag between 58-71 seats. The BJP could also win between 67-70 seats.