Explained: What are exit polls and when does it take place?

New Delhi, Nov 07: Despite COVID-19 pandemic, a total of 243 constituencies of Bihar reached its final stage on Saturday. It can be seen that all eyes are set on November 10 when the results of the State Assembly elections 2020 will be declared.

But, it can be seen that there are numerous exit polls predicting the fate of candidates who took part in the fray.

Exit Polls rolled out shortly after the third phase of the Bihar Assembly elections 2020 concluded on Saturday. The fight in Bihar is between two main stakeholders - National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the Opposition Grand Alliance (GA).

It can be seen that the NDA comprises the Janata Dal (United), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Hindustani Awam Morcha-Secular (HAM-S) of former chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi and the Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) of Mukesh Sahani.

The constituents in the 'Mahagadbandhan' are Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Congress, Communist Party of India (CPI), Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI(M) and Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) or CPI(ML).

But, what are exit polls and how are they conducted?

Exit poll is a post-voting poll, that are conducted just after a voter walks out after casting his/her vote. Such polls aim at predicting the actual result on the basis of the information collected from voters. Also, the exit polls are conducted by a number of organisations. The basic step to predict exit polls is sampling.

According to Section 126A of the Representation of the People's Act, 1951, it puts a ban on exit polls from the period between the commencements of the poll until half an hour after the closing of the final phase of the poll.

However, it is not true that the exit polls are factual and correct all the time. In 2004, the exit polls had wrongly predicted the BJP-led NDA coalition winning again.