By Narendra Puppala
New Delhi, The Aam Admi Party is riding back to power on the back of an impressive performance at the polling booths, predicts the IANS-CVoter ‘Delhi Tracker’ exit poll conducted after voting on February 8. The exit polls indicate that the AAP’s ‘development’ plank has ridden over the BJP’s ‘nationalism’ plank.
As per the exit poll results released, after polling ended on Saturday, the AAP, with an overall vote share of 50.6 per cent, has barely scraped past the halfway mark. The BJP lagged, clocking 36 per cent, while the Congress was trailing far behind with 9 per cent vote share in a bitterly-fought poll battle.
While the AAP tried to promote itself on the development plank, the BJP and Congress had primarily ranged themselves on opposing sides of the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act.
In terms of seat share, the IANS-CVoter exit poll shows the AAP winning a minimum of 51 seats to a maximum of 65 seats in the 70-member Delhi Assembly. In 2015, the AAP had won 67 seats.
The BJP is predicted to win between a low of 3 seats to a high of 17 seats. It had won 3 seats in 2015.
The Congress is expected to win a maximum of 3 seats. In 2015, the Congress had failed to win even a single seat.
Saturday’s exit polls show that the AAP has maintained the lead it had registered in the pre-poll survey projections, when elections were announced. Findings of the survey on January 6 indicated that AAP would garner 53.3 per cent of votes and end up with close to 59 seats, while the BJP with 25.9 per cent of votes may have to remain content with just eight seats.
The extensive exit poll asked 11,839 respondents after they voted for in the assembly elections. The exit poll was conducted in all 70 assembly constituencies spread across the 7 parliamentary constituencies of Delhi.
The votes will be counted on February 11.
