LOKSABH ELECTION 2024- Analysts claim the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) may not come back to power

HEADLINES TODAY -Four of the seven phases of India's general elections have been concluded, covering 380 seats and hundreds of candidates. Voters have sealed the mandates for roughly 70% of the total Lok Sabha seats. Both social and traditional media are abuzz with poll studies and analyses, though a common observation between them all is that the electoral contest, which initially appeared to be a done deal, has proved to be tighter than anticipated, with local factors taking precedence over national issues. 
A few analysts claim the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) may not come back to power. Some others predict that the party may not be able to touch 272 seats on its own, though with allies it might manage to cross the halfway mark. The slightly lower voter turnout has added to the anxiety, and supporters of both the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the INDIA bloc are perplexed.  People who believe that the BJP could lose this election often cite the example of 2004, when Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a public favourite, lost the mandate. Almost all exit polls had failed to gauge the public mood back then. If exit polls conducted through scientific techniques can go wrong, ground reports, based on unscientific sampling methods and gathered through ground feedback, can also be misleading. This is because such local reports usually tend to portray elections as ‘pitched battles', with supporters of each camp claiming that victory is theirs. This was seen even in the Madhya Pradesh state elections in 2023, which largely became a one-sided battle in the end.