India’s wildly inaccurate exit polls, which predicted a landslide election victory for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party, led to dramatic public apologies from polling firms this week and calls for investigations into possible manipulation.
Nearly all exit polls released on June 1 forecast Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies winning more than 350 seats in the lower house of parliament. The final results released three days later brought the coalition’s total to just 293 seats.
The exit polls pushed the benchmark stock index to a record on Monday, followed by a crash a day later when nearly $400 billion in value was wiped from the market. Opposition parties called on the stock market regulator and parliament to investigate polling stations and BJP leaders for possible manipulation.
