Blog Details

Author - Associate Megha Motwani
What is it?

The exit poll is the poll of voters taken just after they exit the polling station. But if you’re going to get the real results in just a few hours, what’s the point of an exit poll? Well there are several points. First, because election is big impactful things, it’s only human nature for people to want to know the results as quickly as possible. Also, with the demands of all-night election coverage, exit polls results are very useful to the media to fill a bit of airtime. But, more importantly, because voters cast their actual votes anonymously you get much more detail from an exit poll. Not only how different groups of people voted, but perhaps even why they voted as they did. A well-run exit poll can be extremely accurate so that in countries such as the U.K.and South Africa, revealing the results before the votes closes is actually illegal, in case the exit polls influence the people yet to vote. The exit polls in countries such as Venezuela and the Ukraine are sometimes compared with the official results in order to check for signs of election fraud.

History

Exit polls are nothing but are simply opinions of surveyors who sit outside the polling stations and analyses the voting patterns of the voters and try to deduce to whom they might have given vote and from some it’s directly known that to whom they have casted their vote.

Exit polls had a mix rate of success in the past and in some cases they have even lost credibility. Moreover, making predictions that who’s going to win based on any exit poll is banned by election commission of India. The fact is in 2014 elections no one quite saw the extent of BJP win even in the state election which has followed. There have been some hits and some misses and not everyone predicted that three state winning heartland for the congress either in the last year.

Legalities
The exit poll is banned in India but not entirely. The Election Commission after brief discussion with political parties banned this practice of publishing results based on exit poll back on January 11 1998. However, the limitation was enforced for a limited period of time.  No opinion poll or exit poll can be released when the voting is still on, as publishing of result may influence the voters who are going to cast their vote.

The law on this point is Section 126A of the Representation of the People's Act, 1951 which bans the exit polls until half an hour after the final phase of voting has been held. Not adhering to the provisions of this section will attract punishment of imprisonment for a term which may extend to two years or with fine or with both under this section.

Rights

The ban on publishing exit poll induced contempt from media world. They were refusing such ban on the ground of violation of their Article 19 (1)(a) the right of free speech and expression. However, the same was still brought into force on the reasoning that the constitution has provided state to make such laws violating the very Article 19(1)(a) if it is reasonable and is in public interest under Article 19(2) of the Indian Constitution.