New Delhi:
Will the just-concluded assembly elections spell the end of the dream run by Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party in the national capital? Six of seven exit polls appear to think so, with just one tentatively giving the party half a chance. Matrize has predicted an outer margin of 37 seats for AAP — two more than the halfway mark of 35 in the 70-member assembly.
The rest are predicting a change of guard — suggesting that the people of Delhi have changed their allegiance from AAP to the BJP. Four of them predicted between 15 and 35 seats for the party and 38 to 40-plus seats for the BJP. Only one, the People’s Pulse, has suggested a BJP sweep, with 51-60 seats.
An aggregate predicts 26 of Delhi’s 70 seats for AAP and 43 for the BJP. Most pollsters have kept the Congress in the fringes — the maximum seats predicted for the party is just three.
While exit polls do not always get it right, in the last two elections, they had correctly predicted a victory for AAP, though falling short of the massive mandate the party had received.
The predictions come on the heels of a loud election campaign for the BJP that kept a tight focus on the corruption allegations against AAP — the party that came to power on the wings of the anti-corruption movement by Gandhian Anna Hazare.
Over the last two years, a majority of AAP leaders, including Arvind Kejriwal, his trusty aide Manish Sisodia and a number of his party’s leaders spent time in jail over multiple corruption allegations.