The Farce of Opinion Polls

My father was a very politically inclined man and it was because of him that whole family took keen interest in the politics. In the1984 elections, as a result of untimely death of Sri Indira Gandhi, there was a huge sympathy wave which resulted in Rajiv Gandhi getting unprecedented majority in the parliament (it's another thing that he failed in meeting people's expectations). The vivid memories from that era are of Mr Vinod Dua and Mr Prannoy Roy conducting exit polls and result trends and the post poll analysis in a 24-hr non stop broadcast. DD also used to broadcast 3-4 Hindi films to keep audiences hooked to it.

In the year 1999, India Today predicted a landslide victory for BJP+ with up to 336 seats and Cong+ was expected to get around 140. In the actual result, BJP got the majority and got 299 and Congress alliance managed 144. So, it's quite clear that polls were fairly correct in 1999. In 2004, India-Today predicted an NDA sweep with alliance expected to get around 330 seats and another Congress rout. The results were shocking, NDA got 181 and UPA managed 218 seats. The pollsters tried to play little safe in 2009 while showing NDA as the largest party in an expected 'hung parliament'. In 2009, India Today expected UPA to be marginally ahead of NDA and gave UPA around 200 and NDA around 180. In actual UPA got 234 and NDA 184 with BJP only managing 134 seats in it.

	NDA	UPA
1999 poll	336	140
Actual	299	144
2004 poll	330	140
Actual	181	218
2009 poll	200	200
Actual	180	234

From the above table it's quite clear that science or art of predicting the election results have been going wrong waywardly. Some pollsters in 2004, gave UPA around 180 as well. Predicting or forecasting any result isn't an easy task, some people might not tell the truth during surveys and data can be doctored or raffued or paibanded. With such anomalies in the results and an undercover string 'Operation Prime Minister' the questions on the validity of these polls are obvious.

 During the days of Prannoy and Vinod, this was serious business and same can't be said for the present day polls. The worst exit polls were conducted during the 2013 Delhi elections when a company called c-voter predicted just 6 seats to AAP. In 2012 UP elections, Akhilesh stumped all the polls with a totally unexpected results. Looking at all these aberrations, it's quite clear that if there is any relevance for these polls and it has just become another tool of marketing a party.