Pradeep Gupta's Axis My India will not release West Bengal Exit poll results. Here's why

West Bengal Exit Poll 2026: Renowned pollster Axis My India will not release its exit poll reuslts for West Bengal this year, the data intelligence agency's chief Pradeep Gupta said on 30 April.

The agency released its numbers for Assam, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry on 29 April.

Pradeep Gupta, veteran psephologist, said that most of the voters in West Bengal refused to speak up after casting their votes.

"See, the method of Axis My India is talking to people face to face. And when we tried to talk after the first phase, about 60-70 per cent of the people had their lips sealed. They were not even ready to say yes or no," Gupta told NDTV.

"No one is ready to talk to anyone in the context of elections. So, as long as our sample is not representative, on the basis of a 20-30 per cent sample, we do not believe it is right to predict any number. For that, we will try once again Thursday. Maybe now that the elections have been held, people will be more relaxed," he added.

Gupta, however, told NDTV Thursday afternoon that Axis My India won't release the projections.

Most of the exit polls on 29 April projected that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) may come to power in West Bengal for the first time ever. Two pollsters, however, said that the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) will retain power in the state after the high-stakes elections held in two phases.

High degree of non-response bias

"The fieldwork in West Bengal presented an atypical and statistically significant challenge. We observed an exceptionally high non-response rate, with approximately 70 per cent of approached voters declining to participate in the survey. While some degree of respondent hesitancy is factored into our sampling models, a refusal rate of this magnitude materially exceeds historical norms and introduced a high degree of non-response bias," Axis My India said in a press statement on Thursday.

Of 294 constituencies in the West Bengal Assembly, 148 are required to get a majority.Exit poll results have not been accurate on the past.

The contest in West Bengal was largely considered bipolar between the ruling TMC and a resurgent BJP. The exit poll results are rarely accurate, and actual results will be released after counting on 4 May.

While Poll Dairy, Matrize News and PMARQ predicted the BJP's win, Janmat and People’s Pulse projected the ruling TMC to retain power. The second and final phase of the West Bengal Assembly polls concluded on Wednesday.

What the exit polls 2026 projected

Matrize has given the BJP an edge with 146-161 seats and predicted 120-140 seats for the TMC. P-Marq has also predicted a close BJP victory in Bengal. The pollster projects that the BJP would win anywhere between 150 and 175 seats, while the TMC will bag 118-138 seats.

Another pollster, Praja Polls projected a victory for the BJP with 178-208 seats as against 85-110 seats for the TMC. Poll Diary has projected 142-171 seats for the BJP as against 99-127 for the TMC projecting a victory for the BJP for the first time in Bengal assembly elections.

BJP's track record in Bengal

The BJP has not won assembly elections in West Bengal so far. Yet, it achieved a remarkable milestone in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections by winning 18 of the 42 parliamentary seats of Bengal, a sharp increase from 2 seats it had won in 2014.

In the last 10 years, however, the BJP has experienced significant growth in West Bengal and emerged as the primary opposition to the Trinamool Congress by increasing its vote share and winning substantial seats in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The saffron party won 77 seats in the 2021 assembly elections and became the state's principal opposition party.

What happened in 2021 exit polls and actual results?

In 2021, exit polls predicted a close fight between the TMC and the BJP in Bengal. The poll of polls predicted that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress party would win 156 of the state's 292 seats that went to polls and that the BJP would score a strong 121 seats.

But eventually, the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC won the election with a landslide, winning 215 seats out of the 292 polled. The BJP won 77 seats, emerging as the principal opposition party in the West Bengal assembly for the first time.