A couple of hours after the polling came to an end, several television channels, both national and local, came out with the exit poll results in the state.
More or less, all the channels have predicted that YSR Congress party headed by Y S Jaganmohan Reddy would bag majority of the seats, ranging from 13 to 16 seats.
An exit poll conducted by independent agency, the Centre for Voting Opinion & Trends in Election Research (CVOTER) has, in fact, predicted that the YSR Congress would win 16 seats and the Congress would draw a blank.
National channels like Headlines Today and NDTV also indicated a clear victory in favour of the YSR Congress. Even a die-hard Jagan critic like Lagadapati Rajagopal, the Congress MP from Vijayawada, himself has conceded that the YSR Congress would win 12 to 16 seats.
However, ABN Andhra Jyothy, known for its blatant anti-Jagan stand (if not pro-Telugu Desam Party), has conducted its own exit poll survey.
According to it, the YSR Congress party would be able to win only eight seats – Payakaraopeta, Polavaram, Ongole, Udayagiri, Rayachoti, Railway Koduru, Rajampet and Anantapur, besides Nellore Lok Sabha seat. On the other hand, the Congress has the chances of winning five seats – Narasannapet, Ramachandrapuram, Narasapuram, Tirupati and Allagadda, while the TDP would win four seats – Prathipadu, Macherla, Rayadurgam and Yemmiganur. The Parkal seat, as everybody predicted, would go to the Telangana Rashtra Samithi.
One fails to understand on parameters Andhra Jyothy came to this conclusion. But the channel has claimed that it had interviewed 2000 voters in each constituency in three phases during the day. Anyways, let us see how credible these exit polls are.
