India’s Exit Polls May Be More Noise Than Signal
While a third term for Modi was expected, the scale of his projected victory looks too large to be realistic.
Set for a landslide?
Photographer: Prakash Singh/BloombergPrime Minister Narendra Modi is set for a landslide victory in India’s general election. Or so claims nearly every exit poll released since the end of voting on Saturday evening. Yet, these surveys have proved spectacularly wrong in the past, and they must be read even more cautiously this time around because of the Modi government’s outsize sway on the television stations that commission them.
Mind you, the actual count on Tuesday may well give enough seats to the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance for it to stake a claim for a third straight five-year term. But 350-plus NDA lawmakers in a 543-member parliament, as predicted by nearly every exit poll, sounds like an unrealistically large mandate. It ought to be taken with a pinch of salt by investors intending to join the stocks rally that’s almost certain to take off Monday.