Kolkata, April 29: IANS-Matrize has become the latest exit poll agency to project a BJP majority in the West Bengal Assembly Elections 2026, predicting the saffron party will win between 146 and 161 seats in the 294-member assembly — crossing the majority mark of 148 at its midpoint and above. The Trinamool Congress is projected at 125 to 140 seats, while Others are expected to account for 6 to 10 seats.
On vote share, IANS-Matrize projects BJP+ at 42.5%, TMC at 40.8%, and Others at 16.7% — a margin of just 1.7 percentage points separating the two principal rivals. The razor-thin vote share gap makes this one of the more conservative BJP projections of the evening, even as it still hands the saffron party a majority. It also underlines just how closely fought the ground-level contest has been across the 294 constituencies, with the seat outcome potentially hinging on micro-level vote splits in dozens of marginal constituencies.
With IANS-Matrize’s numbers now in, a clear consensus is forming across all exit poll agencies that have released West Bengal projections tonight. P-MARQ projects BJP at 150-175 seats and TMC at 118-138. Praja projects BJP at a stunning 178-208 seats. IANS-Matrize, at 146-161, represents the most conservative BJP estimate of the three but still places the party above or at the majority mark. No agency has projected a TMC majority or even a hung assembly.
If the IANS-Matrize numbers hold on counting day, the BJP would be making history in West Bengal — becoming only the second party after the TMC itself to win an outright majority in the state in the post-liberalisation era, and ending what would then be 15 years of uninterrupted Trinamool Congress rule. A BJP government in Bengal would also represent the culmination of the party’s most sustained state-level political project since its expansion into the northeast, and would fundamentally reshape Indian federal politics given West Bengal’s size, its 42 Lok Sabha seats, and its symbolic importance as the home state of the opposition’s most nationally prominent figure in Mamata Banerjee.
The 1.7-point vote share gap projected by IANS-Matrize, however, is a reminder that this result is far from a foregone conclusion. In 2021, the average of all exit polls projected BJP+ at 126 seats — and the party won just 77, while TMC swept 216. Every single agency in 2021 overestimated BJP and underestimated TMC, with the average error running to 49 seats in BJP’s favour and 61 seats against TMC. If a similar systematic bias exists in 2026 polling, the actual result on May 2 could compress the BJP’s seat tally significantly — potentially even flipping the outcome.
What makes 2026 structurally different from 2021, however, is the convergence of factors that have genuinely eroded TMC’s traditional advantages: the RG Kar Medical College rape and murder case and its sustained public resonance, 15 years of anti-incumbency, the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls that removed approximately 9 million names, and a voter turnout of nearly 90% by 5 PM on Phase 2 polling day — the highest in West Bengal since Independence, according to the Chief Election Commissioner.