00:00Okay, first let's give you what the poll of polls have said.
00:04Now all the exit polls are out and almost all of them, including Access My India,
00:10have given a clear edge to the NDA to win the Bihar elections where counting will take place on Friday.
00:18Some like today's Chanakya are going as high as 160.
00:22Access My India more conservative, giving 121 to 141 to the NDA in the 243 member assembly.
00:29But the trend is clear, all the major polls are saying the NDA has the clear edge in the battle for Bihar.
00:37I spoke earlier to Pradeep Gupta of Access My India to try and get him to explain his numbers.
00:44Listen in to what he said.
00:48Pradeep ji, a lot has been made about the Mahila, the women vote.
00:52A margin of 5%, how does it really come together for the NDA?
00:56And what I'd like to ask you, if it is a closed election,
00:58if it is the lower limit of the NDA and the higher limit and the higher limit of the MJB,
01:05then those 12 seats, which there is a friendly fight on,
01:10where the margin of victory last time was, you know, in votes was 12,000.
01:14Every seat went down to the wire.
01:15How much will that come into play?
01:16You must have studied those seats as well, sir.
01:18Definitely, yes, Priti, and I will reply for seat by seat for those seats as well.
01:25Give me some time.
01:26But I would always say that these political parties call it friendly fight.
01:30I call it suicidal fight.
01:33Ah, that could be the game changer.
01:35It suits them to, you know, that discourse among themselves.
01:40But when it comes to the voter and the voter sees the symbol of both the party and the machine,
01:46they confuse.
01:46And in the process, the vote gate is split and they get defeated.
01:51So, are they losing all those friendly fights?
01:54Is the Maa Gadbandhan losing all the friendly fights?
01:56No, I will give you the number, but majority of them, they are losing.
01:59But I will give you the seat by seat number.
02:01They are losing?
02:02Wow.
02:02But I have asked the question that the lower range and the higher range of Gadbandhan and the lower range of NDA,
02:10what is the advantage of it and where is it?
02:12I will try to answer it.
02:13I will try to answer it.
02:14Okay, Pradidji, let him finish.
02:18Finish up.
02:19Okay, so Pradidji Gupta is clear.
02:49claiming that caste, mahila and yuva are the critical factors.
02:52A yuva vote is the advantage to the Maa Gadbandhan.
02:55Mahila vote is going to the NDA and caste identities are more or less holding on.
03:01Amitabh Tiwari, founder Voter Vibe, who has also given an edge clearly to the NDA in his poll,
03:08giving them about 135, joins us.
03:11Yashwan Deshmukh, founder C, voter, he is being more cautious, is only giving percentages,
03:15also joins us.
03:17Yashwan Deshmukh, to you first.
03:18Turn out is big in this election.
03:22And that's what has led to a huge question mark.
03:25What according to you, as you look at these numbers, are you also broadly, in percentage
03:30terms in your case, going along with the trend, Pradeep Gupta says 43% to NDA, 41% to the
03:38Maa Gadbandhan.
03:39Do you go along with it?
03:41I won't answer that, Razdi, but what I can tell you, what I have been telling you all
03:45along.
03:45What is your percentage?
03:47What are your percentages?
03:49Which is only confirmed by the higher turnout and the record turnout.
03:54So, basically, I believe that the males have voted more in favour of Mahā Gadbandhan and
04:04females have more voted in favour of NDA.
04:08And I also believe that the gap among the female is much bigger than what everybody is expecting
04:15or anticipating.
04:16Having said that, there is definitely a bigger portion of the younger males in the male universe
04:24that has come out to vote.
04:25And there are two claimants of that.
04:28Bigger claimant, obviously, is Tejasvi Yadal.
04:31And the sizable claimant is also Prashant Kishore of the Badlao and the change mood, which has
04:37that.
04:37Whatever percentage he might be getting in is directly from that change mood, mood of change
04:44kind of emotion or kind of voter.
04:47So, obviously, the Yadav and I mean, I genuinely believe, Razdi, this election of Bihar is going
04:55to change the way we look at the orthodox equation of explaining Bihar.
05:02Yes, I understand caste are important equation, not just in Bihar, in every state.
05:07But this election is the one which is going to probably prove that there are things which
05:13are moving the electoral sceneries beyond the caste and religion arithmetic altogether.
05:19The two voters that we are all discussing, youth and the female, are caste agnostic, the
05:25religion agnostic largely.
05:27Because we know for sure there is a sizable chunk of even upper caste youth, which has on
05:33the Rozgar promise kind of gone ahead and voted for Tejasvi.
05:36And there is a significant chunk of even Yadav and Muslim females who have gone out and voted
05:43for Nitish Kumar, not for BJP, but for Nitish Kumar.
05:46So, I refuse to believe that everything starts and stops at the caste line.
05:52If this election is about anything, it's about the youth voter and about the mahila voter.
05:57And if this election is decisively proving one way or the other, we will know in 72 hours,
06:0248 hours time frame, then these two vote banks have arrived.
06:09And this will force not just the politicians of Bihar Razdeep, but politicians across India
06:15the way we are looking and understanding elections in terms of what kind of futuristic policies
06:22and the vote-catching announcements that are to be done.
06:27So, this is going to be a watershed election in every more ways than one that we can think
06:31of.
06:32Mark my words very carefully.
06:34I don't use these words very, very often.
06:37But I genuinely believe this election of Bihar is going to change the way elections are looked
06:44on, not just by me and you and other pollsters or journalists alike, but basically those who
06:49are the direct stakeholders, that is the people and the politicians in this country.
06:55You know, what is being suggested there for Amitabh Tiwari, to summarize what I heard from
06:59Yashwan Deshmukh, that there are two vote banks emerging, mahila and yuva, women and youth.
07:07And these are two vote banks that may be perhaps moving out of frozen caste identities.
07:12Do you go along with that or do you believe that caste is still the template around which
07:18politics in a state like Bihar functions?
07:21Do you believe that the young are generally anti-incumbency and women tend to be pro-incumbency,
07:27particularly if there is a leader like Nitish Kumar at the helm who has consciously cultivated
07:32a woman constituency?
07:36That mahila and yuva, unlike Muslims and yadavs, are the new M.Y. of politics.
07:41They are the new M.Y. in many senses and it's also a battle.
07:49This election is between M.Y. versus M.Y. in that sense because the N.D.A. or the Nitish
07:55Kumar-led government tried to create this mahila yuva vote bank.
08:00The issue is that yuva is also mahila and male.
08:05So amongst yuva purush, because of this high unemployment rates and whatever said and done,
08:11the legacy of Nitish Kumar is marred by the fact that there is a lack of industrialization
08:17and creation of jobs in Bihar.
08:18So this you can say half of yuva is actually wearing towards the Mahagadbandhan.
08:24So it becomes a two and a half M.Y. sort of versus a one and a half M.Y. sort of for
08:30the N.D.A. which is the mahila and the mahila yuva.
08:34However, degree of consolidation of the youth in favor of Mahagadbandhan is not that high
08:42when you compare it with the mahila.
08:44So there is fragmentation in the youth vote and whatever Jansuraj is getting, 5%, 7%, 10%
08:52according to different polls, a large chunk of which is coming from this 18 to 24 age group.
08:58And that is what I think in this M.Y. versus M.Y. battle gives that slight edge to that N.D.A.
09:04as Yashwanji mentioned because we talk about the aspirational class youth in states like
09:11Bihar, MP, UP etc. or the Hindi heartland, the mahila is also becoming aspirational and
09:19that also rural mahila, mahila living in rural areas, villages is becoming aspirational and
09:26this Jivika Didi in some ways has also empowered them and is taking them through this journey
09:32of becoming aspirational.
09:34But purely in terms of the exit poll, I am both of you surprised with Prashant Kishore.
09:40Not a single exit poll is putting him in double digits.
09:44Maybe there is one in vote share but none of them certainly in terms of seats.
09:49Yashwan, you go first.
09:50Are you surprised at all that Prashant Kishore who has got a lot of TV time and certainly
09:55social media time, as per the exit polls not making an impact, he wanted to be a change agent?
10:02Well, I am not surprised because we have seen this replicated earlier in, I mean this trend
10:08earlier in Uttar Pradesh when Priyanka Gandhi did a hell of a campaign but eventually Congress
10:13got squeezed out in the assembly election as the process became bipolar between BJP and
10:18the Samajwadi party.
10:19Even Mayawati got squeezed out.
10:21So, I was always maintaining that if Prashant Kishore is unable or his candidate is not seen
10:28as the winnable candidate, then the Bihar politics is such a bipolar in nature that in terms of
10:36ensuring that the opponent, the main opponent either of the camps doesn't win, eventually
10:43that might fizzle out.
10:44You know, that's precisely what is happening.
10:46Having said that, Radheep, I must say that capturing the vote share or seat share of
10:51a new entrant is next to impossible in sampling perspective, you know.
10:56So, because there is no electoral history to do a projection on when you are doing applying
11:01the strings and statistical formula.
11:03So, his numbers which are ranging 5% plus tells me that even in the raw data, that means
11:09different people have got captured at least 5% of the vote per Prashant Kishore.
11:14And, you know, on the higher side, I think some of them probably have touched just 10%
11:20if I'm not wrong.
11:21I haven't seen much of the vote share.
11:23Everybody is just playing in the seat share ranges.
11:26I mean, not many are telling us the vote share.
11:29That's the irony of it.
11:31But whenever you look at it that, okay, even if the raw data is capturing his vote share,
11:38which is probably better than the vote share of Chirag Paswan 5 years back,
11:44So, if that vote share is ensuring that Chirag Paswan remains an important player in, not
11:50just in Bihar, but at the national level, I believe if Prashant Kishore manages to breach
11:56that mark of Chirag Paswan's vote share, he will remain or he will become even bigger significant
12:02player in, in the years to come provided, provided, he doesn't call it a quid.
12:07He remains, retains, he remains there to play the politics.
12:10Okay.
12:11I'm going to, if there is any X factor, all these exit polls going one way, but your exit
12:17poll, Amitabh, as well as that of Pradeep Gupta within the margin of error, 2 to 3% difference.
12:24Could this election go down to the wire or are we clear that the NDA will be well ahead
12:30come Friday this time?
12:33A quick answer.
12:34It could go down to the wire if the election is very hyper-local.
12:38We've seen that there is a high amount of anti-incumbency against local MLAs irrespective
12:43of parties and BJP has denied the least amount of tickets to candidates, whereas in other states
12:49we have seen that ratio to be very high.
12:52The other X factor is that even though Jansuraj is polling, let's say, on an average 5% to
12:566%, whom does it spoil?
12:59Because there were 83 close contests in 2020 where the victory mark was less than 5%.
13:05So if Jansuraj is polling 5%, whom it is damaging, an NDA or a Mahagadbandan or both or on a net
13:12basis, either of the alliances.
13:14The whole game now is largely predicated on the alpha women support, which the NDA is
13:21able to get from the non-core vote bank of NDA or largely the Muslim Yadav vote bank of
13:28Mahagadbandan.
13:30And these are difficult to catch.
13:33It is difficult to catch.
13:34It's also difficult to catch as we've accepted Prashant Kishore.
13:37If that 5% goes up to 8%, that could upset a lot of calculations.
13:43If the 5% comes down even a little, then it could also change calculations in an entirely
13:48different way.
13:49Remember, exit polls are also on test.
13:52They've gone through a period of ups and downs in the last 18 months.
13:57We have been very cautious in suggesting that, remember, these are pollsters who are putting
14:03their reputation on the line.
14:05We are only trying to understand why they are predicting one side will win and not the
14:11other.
14:12Thank you to my guests.
14:13Just a reminder that in about, what, 36 hours from now, it will be verdict day.
14:21The battle for Bihar, we will have all our reporters fanned out and our reporter anchors who have
14:26the ability to assess the results because they've spent a lot of time on the ground in Bihar.
14:33And that's the reason that we will be making sure that this is the channel which will give
14:39you all that you need to know on verdict, State of War Bihar on the 14th of November.
14:45So that's the day to look forward to.
14:47To all of you who've been watching the show tonight, thanks for watching.
14:51Stay well, stay safe.
14:53Good night.
14:54Shubhraatri.
14:55Jay Hind.
14:56Namaskar.
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