Election strategist Prashant Kishor has publicly acknowledged that his predictions for the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) seat tally in the recent Lok Sabha elections were incorrect. Kishor, known for his expertise in political strategy, admitted his miscalculation in an interview with India Today, conceding that he and other pollsters significantly underestimated the election results.
Ahead of the June 4 election results, Kishor had predicted that the BJP’s seat count could match or exceed its 2019 tally of 303 seats. Contrary to these expectations, the BJP’s seat count dropped to 240, a substantial decrease from the previous election. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA), led by the BJP, now relies on alliances with the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and Janata Dal (United) to secure a majority in the lower house, holding a total of 293 seats. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to take the oath for his third term on June 9.
During the interview, Kishor stated, “Yes, I and pollsters like me got it wrong. We are ready to eat the humble pie.” He further explained that his team’s projections missed the mark by about 20 percent. “We were saying BJP would get somewhere close to 300, and they got 240,” he admitted. Despite noting some anger against Modi, he did not anticipate widespread discontent.
Kishor also announced that he would no longer predict the number of seats in future elections. “No, I would not get into the number of seats in elections anymore,” he declared. Reflecting on his career, he acknowledged that engaging in numerical projections was a mistake he made only recently, during the Bengal Assembly election and the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
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Kishor elaborated on the broader context of the election results, noting that the BJP maintained a 36 percent vote share, slightly down by 0.7 percent from the previous election, which he described as maintaining the status quo. He emphasized that while the numerical predictions were incorrect, other aspects of his analysis were accurate, particularly the lack of a strong positive movement from the opposition and the geographical expansion in the east and south.
“As a strategist, I should not have got into numbers. I never used to. It is just in the last two years that I have made the mistake of getting into the numbers,” Kishor said. He concluded by reaffirming his decision to avoid numerical predictions in the future, focusing instead on qualitative analysis of the political landscape.
