An exclusive Exit Poll conducted by CVoter for ABP News has revealed that the Congress looks set to defeat the BJP in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections.
The Congress had won by a narrow margin in 2018, but lost power in 2020 when a group of rebels led by Jyotiraditya Scindia joined the BJP.
In this round of elections, ABP-CVoter projections make it clear that the Congress will almost certainly get a majority in the House of 230 seats.
According to the ABP-CVoter Exit Poll conducted with a sample size of 45,521, the Congress is winning between 113 and 137 seats, with 116 being the simple majority mark in the state.
In 2018, the Congress had won 114 seats.
The vote share of the party is set to go up to 44.1 per cent this time from the 40.9 per cent it managed in 2018. In contrast, BJP's vote share in Madhya Pradesh is set to decline marginally from the 41 per cent it obtained in 2018.
The Exit Poll projects the BJP to win between 88 and 112 seats. Even in the best case scenario, the BJP manages 112 seats, which is short of the majority mark.
If the Exit Poll projections hold good, Kamal Nath could be back as the Chief Minister.
The poll also shows that the BSP is a spent force in the state and is projected to win less than 3 per cent of the vote share.
A deeper analysis of the Exit Poll numbers also shows that the BJP is not gaining significantly in the Chambal region as was hoped after the entry of Jyotiraditya Scindia. The Scindia family has deep roots in the Gwalior-Guna region.
Out of the 34 seats in the region, the BJP is projected to win between 4 and 8 seats. In 2018, the party had won only 7 seats in the region while the Congress had romped home with 26 seats. The exit poll numbers show a similar trend this time.
Interestingly, while the Congress had projected Kamal Nath as its Chief Ministerial candidate even before the election dates were announced, the BJP did not project Shivraj Singh Chauhan as its CM face.