SP-Congress Ahead in UP, Congress May Win Punjab, BJP to Get Uttarakhand

A two window image showing Congress and BJP supporters waving their respective party flags.

New Delhi: CNN-News18’s Mega Poll of Polls has predicted a severe setback for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Uttar Pradesh and the Akali Dal-BJP alliance in Punjab in the coming Assembly elections. It has also predicted that the BJP will come to power in Uttarakhand

According to the Mega Poll of Polls computed in partnership with Gramener, the Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party in alliance with the Congress is set to win 181 seats, which is ahead of the rest of the pack but still not enough to get to the halfway mark in a house of 403 seats.

The BJP is placed second with 160 seats, way down from its performance in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls where it rode the Modi wave and won 71 out of 80 seats. Mayawati’s Bahujan Samajwadi Party (BSP) is left way behind in the third spot with 57 seats.

In Punjab, the ruling SAD-BJP combine is predicted to lose in a big way with only 21 out of 117 seats. The Congress is likely to end up quite close to majority with 58 seats and Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) with 37 seats.

The BJP seems set to trump the Congress in Uttarakhand and bag 40 out of 70 seats. Harish Rawat’s Congress is predicted to end up with only 26 seats.

The numbers for the three states were projected after computing weighted averages of the numbers forecast by two agencies – Axis-My India and CSDS. The methodology is explained after the table given below.

Steps to find the weights for agencies:

Step 1
Find middle value of the projected range

Step 2
Find proportion of difference with actual seats won

Step 3
Adjust the proportions that are greater than one

Step 5
Calculate weightage of each agency on basis of their past accuracy

Step 6
Apply respective weightages to present data for final projection