LS Polls: Markets see Modi riding high but voters may surprise pollsters

Nobody ever knows quite what the Indian electorate will produce on counting day.

India’s parliamentary elections are like no others in the world. Nine hundred million people are eligible to vote in 2019, for 543 constituencies -- the largest of which contains almost three million voters. The country will take 39 days to vote; some states, like giant Uttar Pradesh with a population of 200 million, will vote in seven stages. And, on May 23, we will get to know who won.

That’s assuming there’s a clear victor. The last elections, in 2014, threw up a result that had been unthinkable for three decades: a clear majority for one party, Prime Minister Narendra