Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s coalition clearly in the lead, exit poll shows

Narendra Modi is on track to win a third term. The party of the outgoing Indian Prime Minister is well ahead in the general elections in India, according to an exit poll released on Saturday June 1 at the end of six weeks of voting. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a Hindu nationalist party, and its allies are expected to obtain at least 355 seats in the lower house of Parliament, well beyond the majority set at 272, according to this CNN-News18 poll.

A big favorite in the poll, the 73-year-old leader has already given his party two landslide victories in 2014 and 2019, largely thanks to his appeal to the Hindu electorate. He himself said he was very optimistic about the outcome of the election. “I can say with confidence that the people of India voted in record numbers to re-elect the government”he wrote on the social network X. The results of the vote, the largest in history with 968 million voters, are expected on Tuesday.