The Bharatiya Janata Party and the Janata Dal United (and their smaller allies, including Chirag Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party) will record a comfortable win in the 2025 Bihar Assembly election, picking up 146 of the state’s 243 seats, according to the combined data from multiple exit polls.
The Rashtriya Janata Dal-led opposition alliance, which includes the Congress that grudgingly named the RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav as its chief ministerial candidate, will finish a distant second with 90 seats.
And, crucially, poll strategist Prashant Kishor‘s Jan Suraaj Party, seen as a dark horse that could play the role of kingmaker in a politically volatile state, is likely to crash on its electoral debut.
Kishor’s party is not expected to win more than two seats, at best.
Health warning: exit poll data is unpredictable and may not reflect final results.
The majority mark in the Bihar Assembly is 122.
The biggest (predicted) victory is offered by the P-Marq, Dainik Bhaskar and Matrize exit polls.
The P-Marq figures indicated the NDA will get between 142 and 162 seats and the Mahgathbandhan will struggle to get more than 98 and Kishor’s Jan Suraj between one and four.
Incidentally, P-Marq is the only exit poll to offer Prashant Kishor at least one seat.
The Dainik Bhaskar exit poll indicated the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance will win between 145 and 160 seats, while the Matrize expects a similar return – between 147 and 167. And each gives the Mahagathbandan between 70 and 90 seats, emphasising the massive margin of victory for the NDA.
Neither gives the Jan Suraaj more than three seats.
The People’s Insight and Peoples Pulse exit polls also believed the BJP and JDU will return to power in Bihar, although with slightly reduced margins. The former indicated a return of 133 to 148 seats for the ruling alliance and 87-102 for the RJD, Congress, and its smaller allies, which include a Left front.
The latter predicted 133 to 159 seats for the BJP-JDU and 75-101 for the RJD-Congress.
None of the four gave a second look at Kishor and his Jan Suraaj. The Dainik Bhaskar exit poll, in fact, said he would win zero seats. Matrize and People’s Insight predicted a maximum return of two seats.
Peoples Pulse was most magnaminous, giving the poll strategist as many as five seats.
The JVC exit poll was more conservative, giving Chief MInister Nitish Kumar’s administration a thumbs-up but with fewer seats than the other estimates. According to JVC, the NDA is expected to win between 135 and 150 seats, the Mahagathbandhan 88 to 133, and the Jan Suraaj one, maybe.
The Chanakya Strategies data offered the RJD and Congress the most hope; that data also suggested the BJP and JDU would win, but predicted the opposition will win as many as 108 seats.
The ruling alliance, it said, would claim between 130 and 138 seats, enough to claim majority but a far less stable margin than predicted by any of the other exit polls. The Mahagathbandhan, it said, would win between 100 and 108 seats. But the Jan Suraaj of Prashant Kishor, it said, would get zero seats.
Voting for the second and final phase – for 122 of the state’s 243 seats – concluded hours earlier.
The first phase was held on November 6 and votes will be counted on November 14.
Voter turnout has been a particular talking point in this election, with more than 65 per cent recorded in the first phase and over 67 per cent recorded till 5 pm today.