Today's Chanakya made its name in the Delhi elections in 2013. No other pollster was willing to give the debutant Aam Aadmi Party much of a chance in an election that it would eventually come close to winning. A few months later in the Lok Sabha election, the polling firm again came closest to predicting the Bharatiya Janata Party's massive victory.

On Thursday, Today's Chanakya stuck its neck out again. Against the trend from most other Bihar Assembly election exit polls, most of which said the poll would be too close to call, Today's Chanakya has called the results massively in favour of the BJP.

Chanakya's exit polls are predicting a huge margin of victory for the BJP and its allies, not only in seats but also in its vote share. In fact, where most of the exit polls are putting the vote share margin at a percentage point or two, Today's Chanakya has gone so far as to say the BJP will be ahead by seven.


Similarly, most polls have the both the National Democratic Alliance and the Grand Alliance neck-and-neck in the projected seat share. For example, the India Today Group-Cicero poll has predicted a BJP win, but only with the latter getting 119 seats up against the Grand Alliance's 117, in an 243-strong assembly. (Either alliance would need 122 seats to control the assembly by itself.) Today's Chanakya on the other hand, gives the NDA 155 seats and the Grand Alliance just 83 seats. That's not a prediction that can be explained away by the margin of error.


Besides Today's Chanakya, and to a much smaller extent ITG-Cicero, all the other polls give the edge to the Grand Alliance. The NewsX-CNX poll is the most bullish in favour of the Lalu Prasad Yadav-Nitish Kumar combine, giving them 135 seats and the NDA just 95 seats.

Taking an average of the polls, we get almost an exact dead heat. Almost the same average vote share based off the projections and just about the same number of predicted seats.


So, if political junkies and politicians do not want to be satisfied with what appears to be a draw, it is to Today's Chanakya that we look for what appears to be a more than decisive result. It's important to note, however, that the pollster that was successful in Delhi in 2013 and in last year's Lok Sabha elections didn't even come close to predicting the massive Aam Aadmi Party sweep in Delhi this year. It wasn't exactly on the money in Maharashtra last year either.


Which means Sunday will be a test for the BJP, but also for Today's Chanakya; the pollster that stuck its neck out.

The other takeaway from the exit polls on Thursday is, in some ways, the resurgence of the BJP. The party began as clear front-runners in Bihar, a state which the Modi wave properly washed through in last year's general election. Indeed, it was the massive success of the BJP in Bihar and in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh that brought the arch-rivals, Janata Dal (United) and Rashtriya Janata Dal onto a common platform to oppose Modi. (The Congress had no other option but to join.)

Until September, in fact, pre-poll surveys were still giving the edge to the BJP. Then came the Dadri lynching and what appeared to be a concerted effort from the BJP to turn the conversation away from the development plank and towards cultural issues, from beef to caste quotas.


It may not have worked in the moment, with pre-poll surveys right before the elections began in October actually pushing the Grand Alliance into the lead for the first time. But, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi unleashed one of his patented campaign blitzkriegs (and the party took its polarising rhetoric even futher), it appears the BJP has managed to make up lost ground. On Sunday morning, it will be clear if the BJP has done well enough to not just get even but to retake the lead.