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UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 NEW DELHI 000982 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR OPS, P (WEST), SCA (BOUCHER), NSC FOR CAMP 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PTER PREL PINR KDEM IN
SUBJECT: BHARAT BALLOT 09: INDIAN EXIT POLLS: NO CLEAR 
WINNER, AWAITING OFFICIAL RESULTS 
 
REF: A. NEW DELHI 604 
     ¶B. NEW DELHI 969 
 
¶1.  (U) Polling in India's month-long election to choose a 
new parliament and form a new government ended at 5:00 pm on 
May 13.  Immediately afterward, the hyperactive Indian 
electronic media began to furiously air exit polls that 
compiled results from all five phases of voting.  TV coverage 
continued late into the night on all the news channels.  The 
explosion of exit poll coverage at 5:01 pm occurred because 
the media had been prohibited by the Election Commission from 
releasing exit poll information until voting had been 
completed on grounds that such polls could be manipulated to 
influence voting in subsequent rounds. 
 
The Problem with Exit Polls 
--- 
 
¶2.  (SBU) The Embassy has no way of assessing the accuracy of 
the myriad of varying exits polls that were released on May 
¶13.  We strongly caution readers, however, about the value of 
exit polls in India because of their long and proven record 
of being unreliable and misleading.  While the most 
spectacular example of the treachery of Indian polls was in 
2004 when every single opinion and exit polls called the 
election in favor of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) 
coalition, there are many other examples of inaccurate poll 
results during the last 15 years. 
 
¶3.  (SBU) There are many reasons why Indian opinion polls and 
exit polls tend to be suspect (Ref A).  The ailments range 
from political bias of polling agencies and media outlets, 
the operational challenges related to assessing the 
preferences of India's huge (714 million) electorate, the 
preponderance of local issues and parties, and the country's 
vast caste, religious, ethnic and geographic diversity.  Lack 
of adequate technology and poor infrastructure make polling 
an immensely labor intensive, expensive and often dubious 
process. 
 
¶4.  (SBU) Barun Mitra of the Liberty Institute told us that 
all exit/opinion polls "should be ignored" because they have 
consistently proven inaccurate.  He faulted the electronic 
media for seeing the exit polls solely as a marketing tool to 
attract record viewership on polling day.  He said that the 
companies conducting the polls and their media sponsors 
seldom reveal the methodology and frameworks used and never 
discuss the reason why they were wrong.  They simply move on 
to the next electoral event.  Mitra identified several 
anomalies in some of the polls -- one showing a massive swing 
in vote share towards the Congress Party/Nationalist Congress 
Party in Maharashtra, another showing the Congress Party 
retaining its 29 seats in parliament while suffering from a 
significant drop in vote share.  He said neither the polling 
companies nor the sponsors provide any information that can 
serve as a basis for explaining these variations. 
 
Strong Caution: The Polling Numbers 
--- 
 
¶5.  (U) Keeping in mind these warnings, the following are the 
results of some of the most widely aired exit polls: 
 
-- CNN-IBN: Congress, 145-160 seats; BJP, 135-150 seats; 
Third Front, 110-130 seats 
-- Star News: Congress Party, 157 seats; BJP, 154 seats; 
Third Front, 97 seats 
-- India TV: Congress Party, 152 seats; BJP, 143 seats; Third 
Front, 34 seats 
-- Zee News: Congress Party, 145 seats; BJP, 157 seats; Third 
Front, 109 seats 
-- Headlines Today:  UPA, 191 seats; NDA, 180 seats; Third 
Front, 60 seats 
 
NEW DELHI 00000982  002 OF 002 
 
 
-- News X: UPA, 202 seats; NDA, 193 seats; Third Front, 101 
seats 
 
¶6.  (U) There appears to be broad consensus on a few trends: 
 
-- Bihar: BJP-ally JD(U) would perform well due to Chief 
Minister Nitish Kumar's strong governance record.  Former 
Congress allies Railways Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav and Steel 
and Chemicals/Fertilizers Minister Ram Vilas Paswan are 
expected to fare poorly. 
 
-- Tamil Nadu: Jayalalithaa's AIADMK will perform well but 
there are significant differences in the polls as to how many 
seats she picks up. 
 
-- Left Front: The communist parties will lose seats in West 
Bengal and Kerala. 
 
-- Rajasthan: The Congress part will pick up 6-10 seats from 
a low base. 
 
-- Uttar Pradesh: Chief Minister Mayawati unlikely to get the 
45 plus seats she hoped for. 
 
Post Reporting: Keep Your Eye on May 16 
--- 
 
¶7.  (SBU) Embassy recommends that India watchers wait until 
votes are counted and results announced by the Election 
Commission on May 16.  The results will begin to trickle in 
at 9:30 am that day.  Barring a handful of races, we expect 
all the results to be announced by 5:00 pm.  Embassy will 
closely follow the vote count on May 16.  We expect to call 
the Ops Center about noon local time (1:30 am EST) with an 
interim report.  We will transmit a cable by COB on May 16 
(8:00 pm local time) with the complete results.  Mission 
point of contact for all elections-related issues is Poloff 
Pushpinder Dhillon.  He can be contacted via Embassy 
switchboard.  The alternate is A/Pol Counselor Les Viguerie. 
 
Comment: Tight Fight 
--- 
 
¶8.  (SBU) Not withstanding the widely varying exit polls, one 
thing is clear to most political analysts we talk to: the 
election is a close race between the Congress Party and the 
BJP to see which emerges as the single largest party.  This 
is a distinct change from the situation two months ago at the 
start of the campaign when the Congress Party was favored to 
easily win the most seats.  Analysts attribute the perceived 
slippage in Congress fortunes to strategic misjudgments in 
some of its pre-poll alliance discussions, the lack of an 
adequate ground game in some areas, and unwise selection of 
some candidates. 
 
¶9.  (SBU) Even before the polls had closed on May 13, the 
election cycle had moved on to the next stage -- the 
political parties had already begun negotiating, positioning, 
bargaining, horse-trading, bribing and deal-making to see who 
can muster up the magic number of 272 seats needed to form 
the next coalition government in India.  Unless one of the 
two national parties springs a big surprise on May 16 by 
unexpectedly soaring or sinking, the following two weeks 
promise an exciting political drama with unexpected turns and 
strange bedfellows as parties vie for a piece of power in 
Delhi. 
BURLEIGH