No, India Today opinion poll did not predict BJP will lose four seats in Delhi

What is the claim?

An X (formerly Twitter) post shared on April 2 claimed that an India Today opinion poll predicted a big win for the INDIA bloc on four Parliamentary seats in Delhi in the upcoming general elections. The user wrote, “All the surveys were predicting a clean sweep for BJP in Delhi 2 months ago. But Rahul Gandhi's Nyay Yatra & Kejriwal arrest have turned the tides completely.”

In the post (archive here), the user shared a photo showing two graphics showing these results. More archives can be found here.

X post claiming that an India Today survey has predicted four seats for INDIA bloc in Delhi in the 2024 general elections. (Source: X/Modified by Logically Facts)

However, we found that these numbers were not from an opinion survey by India Today but from an opinion piece discussing the possible vote swing scenarios in the aftermath of Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief Arvind Kejriwal’s arrest.

What has India Today’s opinion poll projected?

We found that in February, India Today and C-Voter’s Mood of the Nation survey based on 35,801 respondents in all seven seats in Delhi projected big win for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in a repeat of the 2019 general elections.

This was a poll conducted by India Today and C-Voter between December 15, 2023, and January 28, 2024. This survey clearly indicated that the BJP had a clear lead over the INDIA bloc (which is projected to garner 40 percent of the vote share), of which the Congress and AAP are a part. 

 Has India Today made any contrasting projections?

We found an opinion piece published on March 26, 2024 on India Today’s website by political commentator Amitabh Tiwari titled “Opinion: Can Kejriwal’s arrest generate sympathy and propel AAP in Delhi?”.

In this piece, Tiwari opines that 36-38 percent of voters in Delhi are not ideologically aligned to any party and can be considered as swing voters. However, he notes that there are only 18 percent relevant swing voters in Delhi who switched from the BJP to the AAP in the 2020 Assembly elections. 

Based on a March 2024 C-Voter survey conducted post Kejriwal’s arrest to assess its possible impact on the 2024 general elections, Tiwari presents four scenarios to depict how these votes be divided between the INDIA bloc and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), led by the BJP. 

• The first scenario, which assumes no vote swing in favor of AAP, predicts that INDIA bloc would win zero seats in Delhi.

• The second scenario considers a six percent swing in favor of AAP, giving the AAP-Congress combine two seats and the BJP five.

• The third scenario in his analysis predicts five seats for the alliance on the back of Kejriwal’s arrest in connection with the now-scrapped excise policy case.

• The fourth scenario assumes a 12 percent vote swing in favor of AAP and Congress, giving them a win in all seven seats. 

These calculations are based on voting patterns and percentages from the 2019 Lok Sabha and 2020 Assembly elections held in Delhi. Kanwal also discussed these scenarios in a broadcast on March 26.

The graphic used in the post is from this piece and the photo is from Kanwal’s broadcast from April 2 on the possibilities based on Tiwari’s analysis. 

This shows that India Today’s opinion poll has not changed its prediction after Gandhi’s Nyay Yatra and Kejriwal’s arrest. An opinion piece’s calculations have been misinterpreted and misrepresented as results of an opinion poll. 

The verdict
We have marked this claim as false as India Today’s opinion poll has not changed its prediction after Rahul Gandhi’s Nyay Yatra and Arvind Kejriwal’s arrest to project that INDIA bloc would be winning a minimum of four seats in the national capital.