While asserting that Congress would retain power in the southern state, the CM expressed confidence that the party would win an absolute majority. In the last elections, the party had got 40 seats.
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Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah on Sunday asked people to relax and enjoy the weekend and not worry about the exit polls that predicted a hung assembly with some giving a slight advantage to the Congress and others to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Its second exit poll, with Today’s Chanakya, later went on to give BJP 120 seats.
A win for the Congress would boost the party’s morale for the assembly elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Mizoram in November-December, and for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
It was highly unlikely for the JD (S) to tie-up with the BJP as it had a “bitter experience” forming a government with the saffron party in 2008 and the alliance ended on a bad note.
The Congress has requested that the Sriramulu be disqualified from contesting elections and also to lift any injunction on the Kannada television channels or other media from showing or playing the video. According to the exit poll report, the BJP will get 95-114 seats, while the Congress will remain confined to 73-82 seats. The JDS+ is down to 22-30 seats, with a vote percentage of 17 per cent. This later revised the BJP’s seat projection to 101-113, saying the “first cut” was skewed.
An opinion poll, sometimes simply referred to as a poll, is a kind of voter behaviour survey which is conducted to find out the public opinion before voting takes place, while an exit poll happens right after voting.
There was another twist to Times Now’s coverage on exit polls. But what a lot of them have predicted is that H.D. Deve Gowda’s Janata Dal (Secular) may turn out to be the kingmaker, with anywhere between 22 to 43 seats.
The exit polls on Saturday predicted a hung assembly in Karnataka with no political party winning a clear majority in the 225-member assembly.
Analysts believe that a loss in this election would spell disaster for the Congress party, which rules only three other states apart from Karnataka.
Party-wise vote share and expected seats.
The EC ordered the re-polling of the Hebbal assembly constituency’s polling station number 2 in Bengaluru as the polling was stopped earlier on Saturday due to a technical glitch in the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM).
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Ramanagara district recorded the highest voter turnout with 80% while Bengaluru averaged around 50%, thus maintaining its record of polling one of the least votes and bringing down the state average.
