News18-IPSOS Exit Poll Results for Maharashtra Assembly: Pollsters predict saffron sweep, major drubbing for Congress-NCP; BJP to win 141 seats, Shiv Sena 102

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Shiv Sena are set to retain power in Maharashtra, bagging 141 and 102 seats respectively, according to the News18-IPSOS exit poll result that was released at 6.30 pm on Monday, half an hour after voting in the Assembly election concluded in the state.

The BJP is expected to win 43 seats in Vidarbha and 22 and 26 seats in Marathwada and western Maharashtra respectively. Meanwhile, Shiv Sena is slated to win 22 seats in Marathwada and 16 seats each in Mumbai and western Maharashtra.

According to the exit poll, the Mahayuti (BJP-Sena alliance) will have a massive margin over the Maha agadhi, comprising the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). The alliance between Congress and the Sharad Pawar-led party is predicted to bag only 41 of the 288 seats in the Maharashtra Assembly.

Solapur: People stand in queues to cast their votes during Maharashtra Assembly elections, in Solapur, Monday, Oct. 21, 2019. (PTI Photo)(PTI10_21_2019_000338B)

While the Congress is expected to win in 17 seats, NCP will emerge victorious in 22 seats. Both the allies are expect to perform their best in western Maharashtra, where Congress will bag 7 seats and NCP 15. The former will bag no seats in Konkan, while the latter will not be able to open their account this year in Mumbai. Two seats may be won by smaller partners of this alliance.

Asaduddin Owaisi’s All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) will win in one seat in the north Maharashtra region, the exit poll says. Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena and Prakash Ambedkar’s Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi are not expected to win in any constituency.

According to News18 IPSOS exit poll, 29 percent of the total votes in Maharashtra are likely have been polled in favour of the BJP, while Shiv Sena is expected to have taken 23 percent of vote share. The NCP and the Congress are expected to have taken 13 percent and 15 percent of the vote share respectively.

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Fadnavis is expected to win from Nagpur South West constituency, while Shiv Sena’s Worli candidate Aditya Thackeray is also projected to be emerging victorious. NCP's Ajit Pawar is expected to be locked in a close fight for the Baramati seat, while Congress' Ashok Chavan and Prithviraj Chavan are projected to lose.

Amit Deshmukh, the son of the late Vilasrao Deshmukh, may face defeat in Latur City.

In a state where a total of 8,98,39,600 people, including 4,28,43,635 women, were eligible to vote, a turnout of 58.58 percent till 8 pm. As many as 3,237 candidates, including 235 women, were contesting in 288 seats and 96,661 polling booths were in place with 6.5 lakh staff for the voting exercise.

The Congress said it filed over 250 complaints of poll procedure violations with the Election Commission, including one for Ramtek segment where it said if the EVM button was pressed in favour of Congress candidate, the vote was shown to be going to the BJP nominee.

Methodology

For the News18-IPSOS exit poll, 72 Assembly constituencies were selected and then 432 individual polling station areas were selected using systematic random sampling (SRS) process for conducting interviews. At each polling station, 25 voters were randomly selected for conducting the exit poll. A total of 10,800 voters were interviewed from 72 assembly constituencies in Maharashtra.

Following aspects taken into consideration in the selection of assembly constituencies:

- Constituencies where a party has not lost an election in the past two elections
- Constituencies where the winning margin is low
- Constituencies which flip-flop election to election
- Constituencies that have “heavy weight” candidates

The interviewing process started when the polls open and continued throughout the day until polls closed to ensure better representation of the voters. All interviews were conducted using computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) method.

To overcome prejudice/response bias, election symbols, including party names contesting in selected assembly constituency, were shown on a tablet screen, displayed like ballot box screen. When asking a voting related question, a virtual polling booth scenario was created, wherein we handed over the device (tablet) to respondent to mark the party they had voted for. The questionnaire was translated into Marathi and Hindi, which is mainly spoken in the respondents’ state.

A team of about 12 QC executives conducted concurrent quality checks on the interviews before accepting or rejecting the data. Live monitoring, data on real time basis and GPS-enabled devices had also ensured the quality of field work. The Ipsos team had preempted likely on-ground challenges and risk assessment and mitigation strategies were accordingly planned in advance.