‘Micromanagement’ Pays Off? Why Delhi Exit Polls Are Predicting BJP Win

All may not be lost for AAP but could it be enough for the BJP to finally win Delhi?

Delhi Assembly Elections 2025: Exit polls are collectively giving the BJP an edge over incumbent AAP but all may not be lost yet for Arvind Kejriwal.

The Quint

In what may be a shocker for Arvind Kejriwal loyalists, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has won the Exit Polls with six ayes. The Aam Adami Party (AAP) has managed to get endorsement to win the Assembly elections from just one pollster. Except for the pollster WePreside, which has predicted the AAP winning in the range of 46-52 seats, six others, including Chanakya, P-Marq and ABP Matrize, are sanguine for a saffron gust in the national capital.

While Exit Polls as a science to predict the poll outcomes are maturing in India, they don’t yet have clean records on many occasions. But the Exit Polls of Delhi Assembly Elections this year are overall indicating tough contest in Delhi.

This is understandable because the AAP is contesting the fourth Assembly elections in a row, and the party-led government has been in power for almost 12 years. The novelty factor of AAP has worn out, and the BJP is resurgent after victories in the Haryana and Maharashtra elections.

A Look at Past Delhi Exit Polls 

Pollsters largely had easy tasks in making bets for the 2015 Assembly elections in Delhi. But they faltered.

Many had sniffed out the changing political flavour in Delhi in 2015 but were miserly with making projections. Axis India made the highest prediction of the AAP winning 53 seats in 2015. Others were even more conservative.

The AAP won 68 of the total 70 Assembly seats. The pollsters were wiser in the 2020 Assembly elections. They also made a good sense of the phenomenon of the AAP. Two pollsters – ABP and Axis – hit the bull’s eye in 2020 as the AAP grabbed 62 Assembly seats to stay in ranges of the possible win given by them.

Possible Slippages for Exit Polls

The task in 2020 was largely easier, for evident direct contest between the BJP and the AAP. The 2025 Assembly polls in Delhi showed a semblance of multipolarity of contests on a few seats even while largely the city remained a turf for direct contest between the AAP and the BJP.

In making predictions, pollsters may run the risk of error by betting more on narratives than believing ears on the ground. The battle of narratives hogs the limelight due to media attention, even though voting patterns often indicate that people give electoral preference to factors that have a direct bearing on their life.

Team Kejriwal Vs Central BJP

The Exit Polls may possibly underestimate the weightage of the ‘Team Arvind Kejriwal Vs Central BJP’ factor in the Delhi elections. Having denied the re-nomination of a large number of its sitting Members of Legislative Assembly (MLAs), the AAP is largely seen as a close-knit team helmed by Kejriwal. 

The Delhi unit of the BJP has meanwhile been faction-ridden for decades. This explains why the central BJP team brought in an extraordinary scale of leaders from outside Delhi to man the electioneering in the national capital.

A similar approach backfired for the party in the recently held Assembly elections in Jharkhand. But the BJP won big in Maharashtra while a strong set of local leaders led by Devendra Fadnavis gave a semblance of grounded electioneering. Indeed, a number of the AAP leaders broke ranks to join the BJP. Yet, the core team of the AAP in Delhi throws a semblance of unity in contrast to the faction-ridden BJP unit in Delhi.  

Candidates That May Swing Poll Outcome

Independent candidate Balyogi Balaknath in the Mehrauli Assembly seat in South Delhi is giving equally intense headaches to both the BJP and the AAP. The victory margins in Assembly elections may be squeezed in the absence of a wave in favour of a party. This spotlights the role of the candidates.

Unlike other states, the voters in Delhi have been seen to be highly demanding and unforgiving if they are denied access to elected representatives. The AAP councillors and MLAs are seen scoring over the BJP in giving access to the people and also showing keenness to get their works done.  

AAP vs BJP's RWA Outreach

Delhi voters are quite distinct from other states. Caste plays a key role in elections in other states. But the voters in Delhi majorly look beyond their caste backgrounds to vote on group identities.

The bedrock of the 15-year-long tenure of the late Sheila Dikshit as the Chief Minister of Delhi was majorly the Residents’ Welfare Associations (RWAs). She accorded prominence to leaders of RWAs by holding regular meetings with them at the Delhi secretariat on a fortnightly basis.

The electoral constituency of the RWAs shifted loyalty lock stock and barrel to the AAP in the 2015 Assembly elections and stayed firmly with the Kejriwal-led outfit even in the 2020 polls.

The BJP for the past six months had been working with the RWAs. The functionaries of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) too sought to break the AAP stronghold in the RWAs. The scale of the outreach is said to be on the lines of Maharashtra where the RSS functionaries had held as high as 20,000 close door meetings. 

A Booth-to-Booth Fight

In the 2020 Assembly elections, out of over 13,000 polling booths in Delhi, the AAP had polled a whopping 18 lakh more votes than the BJP in 8000 of them. The BJP’s clear strategy was to narrow the difference with the AAP.

To bridge the gap, the BJP embarked on an extraordinarily micro-managed poll strategy, at least a year ahead of the elections. At the time when the AAP workers were awaiting release of the AAP leaders from the Tihar Jail, the BJP was mapping the route to bridge booth-to-booth the gap with the Kejriwal-led outfit.

The absence of key AAP leaders from the scene for a long spells may have had a debilitating effect on the rank and file of the party.

Still, the APP has the force of ‘bottom-up’ against the ‘top-down’ of the BJP in the Delhi elections. It might be the party's only hope.

(The author is a senior Delhi-based journalist with over two decades of political journalism spent with The New Indian Express, The Asian Age, Deccan Chronicle, and The Statesman. This is an opinion article.)