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A special report on the exit polls for the Bihar Assembly elections, where counting is scheduled for November 14, 2025. Most polls, including those from Axis My India and Today's Chanakya, predict a victory for the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) over the Mahagathbandhan. The discussion features analysis from pollsters Pradeep Gupta of Axis My India, Amitabh Tiwari of Voter Vibe, and Yashwant Deshmukh of C Voter, who dissect the emerging influence of women ('Mahila') and youth ('Yuva') voters beyond traditional caste lines. Yashwant Deshmukh states, 'I genuinely believe this election of Bihar is going to change the way we look at the orthodox equation of explaining Bihar'.
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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 MahÄ 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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