Abstract
Abstract Political opinion polls in India are holistic snapshots in time that divulge deep dive information on electoral participation, ideological orientation and self-efficacy of the electorate and faith in core democratic values. The popularity of election surveys stems from the political socialization and crystal ball gazing curiosity of the citizens to foresee the outcomes of the hustings before the pronouncement of formal results. The opinion polls provide crucial data on voting behaviour and attitudes, testing theories of electoral politics and domain knowledge production. The obsession of the Indian media with political forecasting has shifted the focus from psephology to electoral prophecy, but it continues to furnish the best telescopic view of elections based on the feedback of the electorate. The ascertainment of subaltern opinion by surveys not only broadens the contours of understanding electoral democracy, but also provides an empirical alternative to elitist viewpoint of competitive politics in India.
Highlights
The terms ‘survey’ and ‘opinion poll’ would have remained a professional jargon restricted to the market research industry, had it not been used for predicting the outcomes of electoral competitions in India
The popularity of election surveys stems from the political socialization and crystal ball gazing curiosity of Indians to foresee the outcomes of hustings before the declaration of formal results
Poll accuracy in the initial years of opinion polling was a measure of closeness of vote estimates of political parties with the vote share figures of the Election Commission of India (ECI)
Summary
The terms ‘survey’ and ‘opinion poll’ would have remained a professional jargon restricted to the market research industry, had it not been used for predicting the outcomes of electoral competitions in India. The media-opinion polling industry facing an existential threat resorted to course corrections, but the election polling ecosystem turned from bad to worse, as some political parties were caught falsifying in-house election survey data for political mobilisation. It collates the accuracy levels of public opinion polls by media conglomerates during the national elections between 1998 and 2019. It deconstructs the fundamental flaws in opinion polls, scrutinizes the reasons for erroneous poll predictions and probes the media sensibility in distinguishing between empirical and anecdotal evidence while reporting election data analytics
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