Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) emerged as favourites to win the Delhi assembly elections at the end of polling day. Exit polls conducted on Saturday predicted that Arvind Kejriwal is most likely to be Delhi’s Chief Minister with his party getting a majority in the Delhi assembly.

NDTV’s aggregate of seven major aggregate polls conducted by Nielson, C-Voter, Cicero, News Nation, Axis APM, Today’s Chanakya and Data Mineria showed AAP securing 40 seats, four above the majority mark of 36 in the 70-member assembly in Delhi.

Although the BJP and its chief ministerial candidate Kiran Bedi pointed out that the data was only based on polling till 3 pm, trends pointed to an AAP victory in Delhi. On a day that saw voters turning out in large numbers, it seemed that the polls had grasped a strong under-current for AAP. Delhi recorded 67 per cent polling as of 6 pm and it was expected to go up as the Election Commission extended the polling time in view of people still queuing up to vote.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a meeting with BJP leaders including BJP president Amit Shah and senior ministers Arun Jaitley, Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gadkari and Sushma Swaraj to review the polling patters in Delhi.

Today’s Chanakya exit poll gave 48 seats to AAP and 22 to the BJP. This poll showed the Congress dropping its tally further to 0-2 seats. This poll showed Delhiites’ preference for Arvind Kejriwal as Chief Minister with him securing a thumping 53 per cent of the voters’ approval on polling day. Kiran Bedi lagged behind with 36 per cent approval ratings.

The ABP-Nielsen survey gave the AAP 43 and the BJP 26 seats. This poll showed that AAP had a vote share of 41 per cent in Delhi while the BJP’s vote share was down to 34 per cent. The Congress was shown to have secured a vote share of 15 per cent although it was predicted to get only three seats in Delhi.

This was a vast change since the Lok Sabha and assembly elections conducted in May, 2014 and December, 2013 respectively. The BJP’s vote share had been higher than AAP in both these recent elections. The BJP had secured 31 seats and 33.07 per cent vote share in the elections held in December, 2013. AAP won 28 seats and had 29.49 per cent of the vote share. The Congress, which had been winning for the past three consecutive terms, came down to eight seats but still managed to secure 24.55 per cent of the vote share.

In the Lok Sabha, the BJP’s vote share went up to a whopping 46.63 per cent in Delhi and it won all the seven seats in the Capital. AAP did not win any seats but its vote share went up to 33.8 per cent in the Lok Sabha. The Congress’s vote share went down to 15.22 per cent.

But the situation had clearly changed as per the exit polls. The closest contest was predicted by C-Voter which showed that the AAP was poised to win 35-43 seats while the BJP was poised to get between 25-33 seats. AAP had secured a lead in the vote share with about 43 per cent while the BJP was close behind with 40 per cent of the vote share.

The India Today-Cicero poll put the AAP tally at 38-46 seats and of the BJP at 19-27 seats. This poll showed AAP getting 41 per cent of the vote share while the BJP got 37 per cent vote share.

The Axis-APM poll predicted a landslide for AAP with 53 seats and gave 17 seats to the BJP.

All five exit polls put the Congress at a distant third, giving the party zero to a maximum of four seats.

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