Congress comeback in Haryana, denies BJP hat-trick: India Today-CVoter exit poll

The Congress appears set for a big win in Haryana, preventing the BJP from securing a hat-trick, according to the India Today-CVoter exit poll. The party is projected to win 50-58 of the 90 Assembly seats while the BJP is likely to get 20-28 seats.
The Jannayak Janta Party (JJP) led by former Deputy Chief Minister Dushyant Chautala, which won 10 seats in the 2019 Assembly polls, is likely to see its fortunes crashing and get just two seats. Other parties are projected to secure 14 seats, the survey says. A party or an alliance needs to win 46 seats to form the government.
The India Today-CVoter exit poll for Haryana is based on 13,817 interviews conducted in all 90 Assembly constituencies. Health warning: Exit polls can get it wrong.
If the current number holds, it would be a big boost for the Congress after it made inroads in Haryana during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, when it won five of 10 parliamentary seats. The BJP, which is in power in Haryana since 2014, managed to secure the remaining five.
In terms of vote share, the Congress is likely to get a huge 43.8 per cent, a jump from 28.1 per cent the party got in the 2019 polls, the exit poll shows. The huge vote share for Congress will likely come at the cost of JJP and other parties, whose vote share is projected to see a drop to 19 per cent from 35.4 per cent in 2019, according to the survey.
According to the survey, the BJP is expected to get a vote share of 37.2 per cent, a slight rise from 36.5 per cent in 2019. The JJP, which formed the government with BJP after the 2019 Haryana Assembly polls threw up a hung House, is likely to see a massive dip in its vote share of 3.8 per cent from 14.8 per cent.
Other parties are also projected to see a loss in their vote share they got five years ago. They are likely to get 15.2 per cent of vote share compared to 20.6 per cent in 2019, the exit poll shows.
Assembly polls were held in Haryana on Saturday and a voter turnout of 61.19 per cent was recorded till 7 pm, according to the Election Commission. Counting of votes will take place on October 8.
In the 2019 Assembly polls, the BJP got 40 seats, down from 47 it had won in 2014. The Congress improved its fortunes, winning 31 seats while the JJP won 10 in its first electoral outing. The INLD, once a formidable force in the northern state, won just one seat with Abhay Singh Chautala, the uncle of Dushyant Chautala, winning from Ellanabad.
The BJP and the JJP agreed to a post-poll alliance and formed the government with Manohar Lal Khattar becoming the Chief Minister again. However, on March 12, the BJP-JJP alliance ended after Manohar Lal Khattar resigned to contest the Lok Sabha polls from Karnal, where he had won. The alliance collapsed due to differences between the BJP and JJP over seat-sharing for the Lok Sabha election.
A voter turnout of 68.20 per cent was recorded in the 2019 election. In those polls, the BJP got 36.49 per cent of vote share while the Congress got 28.08 per cent and the JJP 14.8 per cent. The INLD got a vote share of just 2.44 per cent.