Several exit polls on April 30 gave the Bharatiya Janata Party an edge over the ruling Trinamool Congress in West Bengal, after voters in the state turned out in record numbers. Polling in West Bengal was held in two phases, on April 23 and April 29, and the second phase ended with turnout at 92.65%.
The numbers matter because they cut against the pattern seen in 2021, when most exit polls predicted a close fight between the BJP and the Trinamool Congress, only for the Trinamool Congress to win decisively. This time, the same stream of post-vote surveys also pointed to a clear BJP majority in Assam, a return for the ruling DMK alliance in Tamil Nadu, and a comeback for the Congress-led opposition alliance in Kerala.
West Bengal remains one of the places where Narendra Modi's party has been trying to make the deepest inroads, alongside two other states where it has never held power. In Assam, a BJP alliance has ruled for the last ten years, making the poll forecasts there a test of whether the party can hold ground as well as gain it.
The tension is that exit polls in India are not a settled guide. Their reliability is contested, which is why the contrast between 2021's close projections and the Trinamool Congress victory still hangs over every new forecast from West Bengal. Even so, the latest projections suggest the BJP has more momentum in the state than it did in the last election, and that is the result its rivals will have to answer when counting begins.
What comes next is the count itself. If the exit polls are right, the BJP could be looking at advances in West Bengal and Assam on one side, while its opponents keep Tamil Nadu and Kerala in their corner. If they are wrong, West Bengal could again deliver the kind of surprise that made 2021 one of the sharpest rebukes to India’s polling industry in recent memory.