With voting set to be completed on Wednesday across all 288 Assembly seats in Maharashtra and the 38 remaining of Jharkhand’s total 81 seats, all eyes are now on the forthcoming exit polls.

In 2019, the exit polls had missed the mark in the Maharashtra Assembly polls, predicting a landslide win for the then BJP-Shiv Sena alliance, but accurately predicted that the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM)-led alliance would make the most of then ruling BJP’s anti-incumbency and coming to power.

In Maharashtra, an average of seven exit polls put the BJP-led NDA’s tally at 207, well clear of the 145-seat majority mark in the Assembly, and the Congress-NCP alliance’s tally at 65, with the remaining 16 seats predicted to go to Independents and other parties.

On average, these polls overestimated the BJP-Shiv Sena’s combined performance by 46 seats, while underestimating the Congress-NCP’s outcome by 33 seats.

The NDA ended up with 161 seats, but was unable to form a government after the alliance could not reach a power-sharing agreement. The Shiv Sena then joined forces with the Congress and NCP, whose combined tally was 98, to form the Maha Vikas Aghadi government.

While the News18-IPSOS poll was the most off the mark – predicting 243 seats for the NDA and just 41 for the Congress-NCP combine – the poll conducted by India Today-Axis My India was the closest to the results, predicting 166 seats as the lower bound estimate for the BJP-Shiv Sena and 90 seats as the upper bound for the Congress-NCP.

In Jharkhand, pollsters fared significantly better in 2019. An average of three polls predicted the JMM-Congress-Rashtriya Janata Dal alliance would win 41 of the state’s 81 seats, putting the combine right at the majority mark. The average of the polls put the tally of the BJP, contesting alone this time, at 29, followed by now-ally All Jharkhand Students’ Union Party (AJSUP) at four and the erstwhile Babula Marandi-led Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (JVM), which merged with the BJP in 2020, at three. The four remaining seats were predicted to go to Independents and other parties.

The JMM-led alliance ended up slightly outperforming the exit polls with wins in 47 seats, while the BJP won 25, the AJSUP two, and the JVM three. Without alliances with the AJSUP and JVM, the BJP fell well short of a majority and was ousted by the Hemant Soren-led coalition.

While the India Today-Axis My India poll was the closest to predicting the BJP’s tally with its lower bound estimate of 22 seats, its upper bound estimate of 50 was the closest to the JMM-led alliance’s tally, as was the Times Now poll with its estimate of 44. All three polls were spot on with their JVM projection, though they slightly overestimated the AJSUP’s tally. On average, these polls were off by four seats for the BJP and six seats for the JMM-led alliance.