Can exit polls fail, some Indians ask

Some opposition politicians in India are taking comfort in the wrong predictions made by pollsters in the US presidential election in 2016, the Brexit referendum also in 2016 and in last week's Australian election.

Most of the exit polls in India show the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led alliance winning about 300 seats in the 543-member parliament, a comfortable majority and above predictions made before the six-week election got underway in April. The opposition Congress party was a distant second.

"I believe the exit polls are all wrong," said Congress leader Shashi Tharoor in a tweet. "In Australia last weekend, 56 different exit polls proved wrong. In India, many people don’t tell pollsters the truth fearing they might be from the government." Officials seal an Electronic Voting Machine at a booth in Kolkata after voting closed on Sunday.

Votes will be counted on Thursday and results are likely the same day.

Sriram Karri, a novelist and columnist, said exit polls were like "trailers for a movie."

"Could mislead ... but this time I feel the story they tell won't go wrong," Karri told the Reuters Trading India platform.

In India, exit polls famously got it wrong in 2004, when they incorrectly predicted a victory for the BJP alliance.

Karri said: "Exit polls can and may go wrong...but largely a repeat of 2004 is very unlikely here."

The Hindustan Times newspaper said Prime Minister Narendra Modi converted the election into a referendum on himself.

"It was almost as if he was standing from all the constituencies, and candidates were irrelevant," it said. "A substantial element of the electorate has thus chosen a PM, not their MP."

India's benchmark Nifty stocks index was up 2.66% at 0635 GMT after exit polls predicted the BJP would win a comfortable majority in the general election, but investors said they were awaiting major reforms.

"I'm not investing in India because it's near its all-time high, and I don't particularly want to invest in companies or countries where everything is at an all-time high," said veteran investor Jim Rogers.

"If stocks come down or Mr. Modi opens the economy, if he makes the currency convertible, if he makes it easier for people to invest in India, India could be very, very exciting. I don’t think he's done what needs to be done in India for me to get involved."

The Nifty was last at 11,711 points, against a historical high of 11,856.

Samrat Dasgupta, a fund manager at Esquire Capital Investment Advisors, said: "Once the results are out on Thursday, even if it is as expected, I don't see much upside to the market.

"The economy is passing through a rough patch because a lot of data indicators are showing a slowdown, so people will wait for announcements from the new government/cabinet to see what policies will be made."

The partially convertible rupee was trading at 69.53/54 per dollar at 0600 GMT, after rising to 69.3550 earlier, making it up 1.2 per cent on the day. The gain, if sustained, would be the highest since December.

The benchmark 10-year bond yield was trading at 7.30 per cent, down 6 basis points on the day after briefly falling to a low of 7.28 per cent.

A substantial amount of capital was on the sidelines awaiting the election results, and this should begin to flow into markets, market participants said.

Mayuresh Joshi, senior vice president and fund manager at Angel Broking, however cautioned that if the final results, due on Thursday, were contrary to the exit polls, "then 10,900 is the level to watch out for in Nifty, because if that breaks we will see further downside".

Prime minister Modi was helped in the election by four key factors, wrote Shekhar Gupta, editor-in-chief of The Print news portal. India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi waves at his supporters during a roadshow in the city of Varanasi.

India's upper castes, usually divided or supporters of the opposition Congress party, appear to have consolidated behind Modi, said Gupta, a veteran writer on politics and television talk-show host.

The BJP, he added, had overcome "disastrous macroeconomics with effective microeconomics", providing some of India's poorest with toilets, loans, cooking gas connections, housing and electricity.

"These schemes have touched far too many people in quick time to not matter to them," he wrote. "They neither understand nor bother about whether the GDP is up or down, reliable or fudged. They are too poor to yet be in the organised job market."

Thirdly, Gupta said, Modi's government had a good record of building hard infrastructure, roads, bridges and ports. And lastly, he said, the huge chunk of voters who are under 22 have emerged as a huge support base for Modi.

"They've known only one leader, heard just one message, have no reference to the pre-Google context," he said. "Most important: They mostly haven't yet gone out in the job market."

Votes will be counted on Thursday, and Gupta cautioned while the four factors had helped Modi, he was not sticking his neck out with a prediction.

Other political strategists said Modi's presidential-style campaign and his aggressive response after a surge in tensions with Pakistan in February-March appear to have worked well, and overcome concerns about unemployment and falling farm incomes.

Anti-Pakistan wave helps Modi

Other factors that could have helped the BJP were their enormous resources, and the inability of the opposition Congress party, led by Rahul Gandhi, to form meaningful alliances.