1 year ago
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A viral graphic, purportedly showing a 'Poll of Polls' by news outlet NDTV that predicts a landslide victory for the Congress against the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party, is fake.
BOOM found that most of the opinion poll figures mentioned in the graphic are incorrect, and that NDTV is yet to conduct their 'Poll of Exit Polls' - which is carried out on the day of voting to summarise all the exit poll results.
The news outlet also put out a statement calling the graphic fake, and adding that it shall conduct the 'Poll of Exit Poll' on May 10, 2023.
The southern state is headed for elections on May 10, with the Congress party facing-off against the incumbent BJP. While multiple opinion polls have predicted a victory for the Congress, some others are looking at a BJP win. The graphic is viral in this backdrop.
Many users on Facebook shared the graphic, titled 'Karnataka Elections 2023', without a caption.
View such posts here, here and here.
We also found the same graphic being shared with Kannada and Hindi captions.
View such posts here, here and here.
Fact-Check
BOOM looked for NDTV 'Poll of Polls', which summarises all the opinion polls by voter survey organisations ahead of election results, but were unable to find any report done on the upcoming Karnataka assembly elections.
The channel did run a few news segments on a public opinion survey conducted in partnership with Lokniti-Centre for the Study of Developing Societies - one on which campaign is perceived as most visible, and another on who is the most preferred Chief Minister for the state. While BJP's campaign was shown to have higher visibility, Congress leader Siddaramaiah was found to be the most preferred Chief Minister.
We also looked at the actual opinion poll results released by different organisations, and found many figures mentioned in the graphic to be incorrect, while a few were correct.
Out of the seven pre-poll survey results we found, three of them - Zee News Matrize Karnataka, Suvarna News - Jan Ki Baat and TV9 Kannada, predicted the BJP having a stronger edge to be the single largest party, with the Congress trailing closely.
Four others, ABP News - C Voter, Lok Poll, C-Daily Tracker and Eedina News predicted a Congress victory, with some predicting a landslide win for the party.
Comparing it to the viral graphic, we found that only two of the survey results mentioned - by Eedina News and Lok Poll - provided the correct figures. In the following chart we have crossed out the incorrect figures in red, while the non-existent polls have been striked-out in grey.
Furthermore, we also found a tweet by NDTV confirming that the viral graphic is fake, and that the channel will conduct its "Poll of Exit Polls" on the day of voting - May 10.
