A graphic purporting to be an opinion poll on the upcoming assembly election in Gujarat and predicting a neck to neck contest between the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Arvind Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) with 76 to 82 seats and 81 to 87 seats respectively, is fake.
BOOM did not find any credible news organistaion or polling agency releasing these numbers being predicted in the graphic as of writing this article.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) on November 3, 2022, announced that the Gujarat elections will be held in two phases, The first phase of voting will be held on December 1 and the second on December 5 with counting will be held on December 8, along with Himachal Pradesh.
The graphic cites an unnamed opinion poll giving BJP - 76 to 82 seats, Congress - 19 - 25 seats and AAP - 81 to 87 seats, out of 182 seats with 92 seats required for a simple majority.
The caption when translated from Hindi reads, "after Gujarat, BJP will slowly disappear in the country"
(In Hindi - गुजरात के बाद देश से भी धीरे धीरे लुप्त हो जाएगी भाजपा)
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The same graphic is being shared on Facebook with different captions.
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FACT-CHECK
BOOM found that the Gujarat opinion poll being cited giving AAP - 81 - 87 seats and BJP - 76 to 82 is fake and no such poll has been released yet by any channel or credible polling agency.
We have previously debunked several fake opinion polls predicting an AAP victory in the Gujarat elections 2022 and being falsely attributed to news channels and reputed polling agencies that put out opinion polls.
On running a keyword search, we did not find any recently released opinion poll that gave the AAP 81 to 87 seats and the BJP 76 to 82 seats, putting them neck to neck. Additionally the graphic does not cite which election polling agency has released these numbers.
While opinion polls need to be taken with a pinch of salt as they only offer only an indication of voting trends and can be wrong, according to the ABP News-CVoter and India TV-Matrize opinion polls released on November 4, 2022, suggested that the BJP could be coming back to power in the state.
India TV-Matrize predicted for the BJP a majority of 119 seats and three seats for AAP, while ABP News - CVoter predicted that the BJP would get a majority of 131 to 139 seats and the AAP would get 7 to 15 seats.
Recently, another fake opinion poll went viral falsely being attributed to the Gujarati media outlet GSTV News predicting an AAP win with 98 to 105 seats and BJP getting 52 to 59 seats. GSTV News dismissed the fake opinion poll on their Instagram handle on October 28, 2022, stating it had not released these numbers.
