Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi is in for an unprecedented third term in office, if exit polls and post-poll surveys conducted by various television channels on the State elections, are anything to go by.
The Gujarat elections concluded on Monday with the second phase witnessing a turnout of 70 per cent. A record 70.75 per cent of the eligible voters had cast their ballot in the first of the two-phase elections last Thursday, with the average polling being a little more than 70 per cent.
While all the exit polls and post-poll surveys agreed that Modi would return to power in the State, the story went slightly awry for the BJP in Himachal Pradesh, with pollsters giving the Congress an edge over the BJP in the hill State.
Exit polls carried out by C-Voter for Times Now for Gujarat predicted 119 to 129 seats for the BJP, while the Congress was projected to win between 49 and 59 out of the total 182 seats.
News 24 showed that BJP is likely to get 140 against 117 seats it had won in the 2007 Assembly polls as the party is expected to get 46 per cent of the total vote share. The poll carried out by Chanakya for the channel projected 40 for the Congress — 19 short of the 59 it won in 2007.
C-Voter predicted a vote share of 46 per cent for the BJP against 37 per cent for the Congress, while Chanakya said BJP is likely to get 50 per cent vote share against 35 per cent for the Congress.
Headlines Today projected that the BJP would get between 118 and 128 seats. It put the Congress in the 50-56 seats bracket with 37 per cent vote share.
The ABP News-Nielsen exit poll predicted that BJP would win in 126 seats and Congress in 60 constituencies. It predicted that the BJP would win 45 per cent of votes against 36 per cent votes by the Congress.
In Himachal Pradesh, C-Voter predicted 30-38 seats for the Congress and 27-35 for the BJP in the 68-member Assembly.
Chanakya predicted that the Congress would win in 40 seats, while it said BJP is likely to win in 23 seats. Others may take five seats.