Now that the elections are over let us analyse the trends put forth by psephologists and pollsters. News channels would have gone overboard this election too if not for the strict ruling by the Election Commission of India. One remembers how NDTV started the concept of Live Polls where the exit poll trends were shown throughout the day on Election Day! This probably exhibited the brazen way in which NDTV wanted to make a moolah out of the elections.
Let us analyse the results of the Opinion Polls, oops The Analysis ( News Channels were debarred from conducting Opinion Polls). NDTV gave the UPA 199 seats with the breakup as follows INC 163, DMK 15, NCP 15, JMM 3, JKNC 2 and RPI 1. As for the NDA, NDTV gave them 162 seats with the breakup as follows BJP 123, JDU 22, SS 9, AGI 4 and ADAL 3. The third front got 126 seats while the fourth front 33 and others got 8 seats. CNN IBN was less forthcoming. They did not give the statewide breakup of seats. Perhaps Yogendra was not willing to put his reputation at stake with just an analysis. CNN IBN just said that both the UPA and NDA would garner less than 200 seats each.
The analysis of Times Now and India Today are not worth mentioning with their dubious past record. Both had given the same analysis that the UPA and NDA would garner between 350 to 400 seats between them. Now we know that all four were wrong. None of the channels could even catch the trend of the Congress bulldozing its way into the parliament. Congress by itself has got more seats than the predicted number of seats for the UPA! I think this is clearly the same mistake that these pollsters made in the UP assembly elections. None were able to catch the raise of Mayawathi. I remember Rajdeep(CNN IBN) saying that the psephologists got the election wrong but their reporters ( he calls them the ground workers for the news channels) were confident that Mayawati would win the election.
The point I would like to make is, no one should take the electorate for granted. No so called psephologist sitting in AC rooms in Delhi or Bombay should think that the poor man in ‘X’ or ‘Y’ region in India would vote on a set of predefined reasons like caste, religion and region. I would like to quote here what Pronnoy Roy once said in his channel. Seems he asked a farmer, the party that he voted for in the assembly and national elections. He said, “I voted for the BJP at the centre and the Congress at the Assembly elections”. Pronnoy was baffled. He asked him why he voted for two different parties for the National and State elections, despite both elections being held at the same time. The farmer said, “Only if I vote for two different parties will they compete with each other to do good for the electorate in my constituency”. I bet none of the psephologists or pollsters would have been able to catch that trend!
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