Click to play videoNew Delhi: The voting is over in the Presidential polls and the result, which will be declared on Sunday, is supposed to be a certainty.
But are the results really a foregone conclusion? CNN-IBN conducted the first-ever exit poll of the Presidential elections to map and sways and swings in the voting patterns across the country. The exit poll was not based on in-house calculations. It was conducted on the basis of figures that CNN-IBN bureaus from across the country sent in through the day as politicking continued in the corridors of power.
Political analyst Yogendra Yadav of the Centre for the Study of Developing Society and CNN-IBN Editor-in-Chief Rajdeep Sardesai debated and analysed the odds.
The Electoral College
The Electoral College, as of Thursday morning, comprised of 10.8 lakh votes — divided roughly equally among MLAs (5.5 lakh) and the MPs.
"When the race began a month ago, it looked a keen contest. Because initially it appeared that the UPA had only 5.5 lakh votes, which was a bare majority," Yogendra Yadav pointed out. Now, if NDA (with 32 per cent initial vote share) had succeeded in drumming up more support from other players (almost 18 per cent initial vote share), it would have been a very tough race.
But NDA’s attempts at making the election a cliffhanger fell apart following the formation of the third front (United National Progressive Alliance).
Patil vs Shekhawat: Where They Stood
In terms of individual standing across the country, UPA candidate Pratibha Patil made a clean sweep of Maharashtra – her home state – apart from West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, sealing her fate in all the big states.
The few states where NDA-backed Independent candidate Bhairon Singh Shekhawat did reasonably well were in the BJP strongholds of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Orissa.
The Big Picture
Basing the big picture on the estimates sent by CNN-IBN bureaus, Yadav says everything had gone wrong with the NDA campaign. They had their own allies withdrawing support, the UNPA deciding to abstain from voting (except AIADMK) and the plan of getting the BSP on board failed too.
Also, the idea of cross-voting working in favour of NDA did not come true.
And The Winner Is…
Of the 11 lakh votes, about 9.7 lakh votes were cast, out of which Pratibha Patil can be expected to make a clean sweep with 64 per cent vote share, while Shekhawat is likely to manage a mere 36 per cent.
This happened not because Pratibha Patil gained 14 per cent, but because the votes that could have gone to Shekhawat came to her instead. In terms of actual votes, Patil is expected to get approximately 6.4 lakh votes and Shekhawat is likely to trail behind with just about 3.5 lakh votes.
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