Concocted opinion polls predicting AAP victory in Gujarat elections viral - Alt News
Shinjinee Majumder
25th October 2022 / 9:12 pm
A collection of opinion polls apparently predicting the results of the upcoming Gujarat polls is going viral. All the graphics indicate the victory of the Aam Aadmi Party. The four viral graphics feature the logos of India TV, TV9 Bharatvarsh, News 24 and India Today.
Assembly polls in Gujarat will be announced soon, with voting likely to be held in one or two phases and completed by December 4. Gujarat elections have largely been a two-party contest but the Aam Aadmi Party is leading an aggressive campaign this time to make its place in the Gujarat assembly, after its 2022 Punjab win. The Gujarat assembly consists of 182 seats. In 2017, the Bharatiya Janata Party won in 99 assembly constituencies and secured 49.05% of the valid votes polled in the state. Congress won in 77 assembly segments of the 177 where the party fielded its candidates. 13 assembly constituencies were reserved for candidates belonging to the Scheduled Caste while 27 to the members of the Scheduled Tribe.
The India TV graphic shows the victory of AAP with 98 seats while the Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party and Others winning in 13, 67 and 04 seats, respectively.
There are two opinion polls being attributed to TV9 Bharatvarsh. The first graphic shows the victory of AAP with 93-97 seats while the Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party and Others winning 09-13, 64-68 and 00-04 seats, respectively. The second TV9 graphic shows the victory of AAP with 95-99 seats while the Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party and Others winning in 08-12, 64-68 and 00-03 seats, respectively.
The News24 graphic shows the victory of AAP with 95-99 seats while the Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party and Others winning 07-11, 65-69 and 00-03 seats, respectively.
The purported India Today-Axis My India opinion poll shows the victory of AAP with 94-98 seats while Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party and Others winning 07-11, 67-71 and 00-02 seats respectively.
User @jayantdeshm tweeted four of the graphics. (Archive)
The #King of #Gujarat.. Explained..!!#GujaratElections2022 #GujaratGauravYatra #Elections @AAPGujarat @Gopal_Italia #AamAadmiParty #education #healthcare #jobs #electricity #Youth #corruption #Politics #AAP pic.twitter.com/WgwdFZwnx1
— Jayant Deshmukh (@jayantdeshm) October 14, 2022
The graphics have also been shared widely on Facebook.
गुजरात के शहरों, गांवों , कस्बों से लेकर देश के नेशनल न्यूज़ चैनलों तक केजरीवाल ही केजरीवाल छाये हुए हैं ☺️
Arvind Kejriwal जी
#GujaratElections2022
Posted by Pappu Lal Keer on Friday, 14 October 2022
Upon reverse image searching the graphic, we found an old India TV article which contained an opinion poll of the Purvanchal region ahead of the 2022 assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh. The template matches the viral image, with the text and numbers being different. The article was published on January 17, 2022.
Below is a comparison of the viral image and the image used in the India TV article.
On the July 30 episode of India TV’s programme Desh Ki Awaz, they performed a survey which predicted the vote share for the Gujarat elections, if the elections were to be held on that very day. According to their predictions, BJP would win 108 seats, Congress would win 55 seats, and AAP would win 16. This can be seen from the 2:43 mark of the YouTube video. As is evident, the numbers predicted by the survey in this particular episode do not match the graphic that is being circulated.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOf9w-aDIXY?start=162]
As mentioned before, the two graphics that are being attributed to TV9 Bharatvarsh show a different set of numbers. It is unusual for a TV channel to show two different sets of statistics for the same opinion poll.
Moreover if one looks closely at one of the TV 9 graphics, one might notice that the image used for the Others category is not perfectly aligned with the rest of the images. This is a clear indication that the graphic is morphed.
We spoke to Paritosh Chaturvedi of TV9 Bharatvarsh channel, who said, ”This is fake news. TV9 Bharatvarsh has not done any such opinion poll. This seems to be a conspiracy to defame TV9 Bharatvarsh”.
We did not find any News 24 opinion poll with the said numbers. Alt News contacted Govind Pandey, a News 24 journalist, who stated that the graphic was fake.
However, on October 17, the official handle of News24 conducted a Twitter poll with the question, “अबकी बार गुजरात में किसकी सरकार ?” (Translation: Who will form the Gujarat government this time?”). AAP won the poll by a margin of 0.7% votes. The second highest vote share was to Congress. (Archive)
अबकी बार गुजरात में किसकी सरकार ? #GujratElection
— News24 (@news24tvchannel) October 17, 2022
Alt News could not find any opinion polls of the Gujarat assembly elections that have been conducted by India Today. The viral graphic has mentioned polling agency Axis My India. We reached out to Mr Pradeep Gupta, CMD for Axis My India, who denied having performed an opinion poll for Gujarat. He stated that the Gujarat / HP opinion poll was “never conducted & released by Axis My India and India Today Group”.
Hence, several graphics of opinion polls, purported to be from different media houses predicting AAP’s victory in the upcoming Gujarat elections are being circulated. An Alt News fact-check reveals that none of the polls have been released by the media houses as claimed, and they are all concocted.
Student of Economics at Presidency University. Interested in misinformation.
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