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Journalism of Courage
The Karnataka election results 2018 will be out on Tuesday and the polls are being considered a bellwether ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The results are also important for the HD Deve Gowda-led JD(S), which might play the kingmaker as predicted by the pollsters. The 72.36 per cent voter turnout on Saturday is a new record for the southern state, surpassing the 71.90% polling 40 years ago in 1978. The 2013 Assembly polls recorded a turnout of 71.45%. However, the voter turnout in the 28 Assembly constituencies in Bengaluru city was between 48 to 60 per cent.
The Karnataka election results will be out on Tuesday and the counting of votes will start by 8 am in all the 222 of the 224 constituencies that went to polls on May 12. In the beginning, postal ballots will be counted (i.e of officers who were in election duty) followed by the votes cast through EVMs. Elections in two constituencies was countermanded and will be held on May 28 — in Jayanagara, following the death of BJP candidate and sitting MLA B N Vijaykumar and in Rajrajeshwari Nagar, where about 10,000 voter cards were recovered from a flat.
Six out of eight major exit polls and one regional channel predicted that the BJP would get the largest number of seats in the new assembly. Seven polls predicted a hung assembly, with neither the BJP nor the Congress getting to the simple majority mark of 112 seats. All these polls suggested that the JD(S) would be kingmaker, with the party predicted to get between 20 and 40 seats.
Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, who has announced that this will be his last elections, dismissed the exit polls results as entertainment for the weekend and said he was confident the Congress would return to power with 120 seats. “Exit opinion polls are entertainment for the next 2 days. Relying on poll of polls is like a person who can’t swim crossing a river on foot relying on a statistician who told him the average depth of the river is 4 feet. Please note average of 6+4+2 is 4. At 6 feet you drown,” he said in a tweet.
BS Yeddyurappa said exit polls that predicted a hung assembly in the state got it wrong and offered to give in writing that BJP would win more than 120 seats. “With the help of everyone, we are to win 125-130 seats. The Congress will not cross 70 seats and the JD(S) will not cross 24-25. Until now, never have my calculations gone wrong,” Yeddyurappa said.
Meanwhile, former prime minister and JD(S) supremo HD Deve Gowda refused to reveal his cards. “I am not prepared to accept or reject anything, let’s wait for 15th May (counting of votes), we will get to know the reality,” Deve Gowda told the media on Sunday.
In the 2013 assembly elections, Congress wrested power from the BJP with an absolute majority. Congress won 122 seats with a vote share of 36.6 per cent, while BJP and JD(S) managed to win 40 seats each. BJP had received 20.2 per cent of the vote share and JD(S) got 19.9 per cent of the votes. Interestingly, Congress has never won less than 35 per cent of the votes in the state.
