NEW DELHI: Trust exit polls of the Assembly elections in five states at your own risk. They are clearly an enterprise for profit rather an indicator of the voters’ political choice as their success rate in the past has often proved to be dismal because in a hit-and-run game only few succeed.Majority of exit polls, that were shown by the electronic media Monday evening after the last phase of the seven-phased elections in the biggest state of Uttar Pradesh was over, have predicted victory of the ruling BJP in UP and AAP in Punjab while showing mixed outcomes in Goa, Manipur and Uttarakhand.
First and foremost question that comes to the discerning mind is if exit polls is a science, then why they differ with each other in outcomes. Answer would be that some are better experts than the other or exactitude depends on the sample size of the whole exercise and sample size depends upon the amount of money that a consumer data company is ready to spend.
A company invests for profit and does not undertake exit polls for any missionary objectives. Are electronic TV news channels or media houses ready to pay? Answer is “obviously not.”
Majority of exit polls, therefore, are undertaken on small budgets and smaller sample size and therefore go often wrong. Don’t compare them with the exit polls in the United States that are based on the larger size of samples with most of the population computer savvy.
Yet another reason for Indian exit polls going wrong is that our electorate whose majority comes from weaker sections of society are not willing to tell a pollster his or her choice of a party or candidate because of suspicion. While in medium and bigger towns, a section of the electorate that votes for the ruling party is often ready to disclose their electoral options, those who have voted for the opposition candidate often mislead because of fear or reprisal. True that activists and party members don’t hesitate to inform their choices that they have made.
Majority of the exit polls are undertaken in urban centres as very few pollsters venture in the rural countryside and that is why outcomes are often wrong. In rural centres, domination of higher castes is yet another factor that prevents better and accurate results as fear and suspicion act as deterrents.
Journalists in the field have a view different from the exit polls. They say the people’s anger in the ruling party is swelling so much that the BJP may not win even 100 seats in the state. Others put the BJP scoring 150 seats and able to form the government by roping in other parties.
Let us take a closer look at the UP assembly elections where majority of polls have declared the ruling BJP to win. The BJP won the 2017 UP election in a landslide. A victory margin so big that many, if not most, pollsters sense that it cannot be overcome by the Opposition and therefore they have played safe. Polls forecast that even though the BJP may lose 100 seats (from 325 down to 225 seats out of the 403 in UP), it would still win with a clear majority.
Though it clearly appears to be the BJP’s solid, insurmountable foundation — but is it unprecedented? Not quite, because UP has always been a volatile state. The average margin of victory in all UP elections since 1997 is only just below this BJP landslide in 2017.
However, the BJP has another distinct advantage as it fights this election — the Opposition has been so divided that the BJP can survive a larger than normal swing away in its popular vote. If it faced a near-unified Opposition, the BJP would lose with a swing away of 5%, but with the Opposition fragmented the way it is, the swing away from the BJP would need to be significantly higher. So, how many voters can the BJP lose while remaining the winner of the election?
Nevertheless, despite this enormous swing needed for the BJP to lose this election, there is concern within the BJP that swings of this magnitude are not uncommon in UP. In fact, the swing in favour of the BJP in the last election in 2017 from 2012 was a huge 26% and it climbed from 47 seats to 325 seats.
The good news for the BJP is that it can afford to drop a large chunk of that one-time gain and still hold on to power.
Additional unease within the BJP is that despite its record 52% vote in the Lok Sabha elections, there is a sharp drop in its vote in Assembly elections compared to Lok Sabha elections. This drop used to be around 14%, but over the last few years – before and after the 2019 Lok Sabha elections – the BJP has dropped 21% in the 10 assembly elections held one year before and since the Lok Sabha elections.
If this pattern is repeated in UP, the BJP vote would drop to 30.5% in these elections – a swing away of -10% from its current 41.5% vote it won in 2017 – a swing that would be devastating for the party.
Nevertheless, the bottom line for the BJP is that it has entered the contest in this election with an almost unprecedented foundation vote coupled with a large margin of victory because of a deeply-divided Opposition. The problem it faces is that the state has gone through a deep financial crisis because of Covid – it doesn’t really matter if the BJP handled Covid well or not, people have suffered terribly.
Unemployment and lack of jobs have angered youth. Coupled with a rise in prices – again, it doesn’t matter whether it is a result of external factors (like the rising price of oil) – this has generated anger in the population, and few governments in history have managed to prevent a swing away after these crises.
While the main task for the BJP was to prevent the swing away from being more than 7% – because more than that means it could lose power, has it succeeded is the question that will test the credibility of exit polls on March 10 when results announced.
