Wide variation in Bihar exit polls

An election exit poll is a poll of voters taken immediately after they have exited the polling stations. Unlike an opinion poll, which asks for whom the voter plans to vote, an exit poll asks for whom the voter actually voted.

Marcel van Dam, a Dutch sociologist invented the exit poll.

Pollsters, usually private companies working for newspapers or broadcasters conduct the exit polls.

The crucial Bihar battle ended with final round of voting concluded on Thursday, 5 November.

The fifth and final phase saw 60% voter turnout, the highest in all phases.

As many as 7 exit polls were involved in the poll predictions. They include- News 24 Today's Chanakya, News X-CNX, ABP Nielsen, India Today-Cicero, Times Now-CVoter, News Nation and India TV.

While two polls, the CNX and AC Nielsen predicted a majority for the JD(U)-RJD grand alliance with 132 and 130 seats respectively.

Two others, the C-Voter and News Nation polls saw the alliance exactly at the majority mark of 122.

The Cicero poll showed the NDA three seats ahead of the grand alliance with 120 seats, without a majority for anyone.

Today's Chanakya, which got its predictions right in the recent past, predicted a comfortable win for the BJP-led NDA with 155 out of 243 seats.

CNX gave the NDA its lowest tally of 93 while Chanakya gave the grand-alliance the lowest tally of 83.

With no clear trends coming out as a whole, the exit polls only increased the suspense around the Bihar polls.

Exit poll results from Bihar showed a wide variation among them.

The variation though cannot be explained statistically, but could be slightly attributed to biases in the survey.

Further sampling a heterogenous society like India, which doesn't have a simple two-party system, doesn't necessarily give the complete picture.

Be that as it may, four out of six exit-polls predicted a victory for "Grand Alliance."