Delhi, India: Opinion polls are released by the media before every election in India, where they predict the winner days before official results are declared. The assembly election on Saturady in Delhi, which has witnessed one of the toughest electoral battles in the country, has also been subjected to a barrage of media polls which are split in predicting the winner.

While six opinion polls declared that the BJP will win a majority of the 70 seats, four predict an AAP victory while one said it could go either way. This once again highlights the issue of election surveys being reduced to a media gimmick, where political parties and media and business houses with vested interests try to influence voters through opinion polls.

The media, which regards itself as a modern day Nostradamus, confuses voters by forecasting the results and this is an impediment to conducting a free and fair election. Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi trashed opinion polls as “lies”, pointing out that the AAP had claimed they will win over 50 seats in the last assembly elections in 2014, but could not even manage to get a majority.

It becomes pertinent in this context to trace the historical roots of election surveys and why they fail to fathom the correct mood of the electorate.

Delhi Assembly Elections 2015 – Overview of Seat Predictions:

Note: The seat predictions are based on pre-poll surveys.

It started two decades back

A quick recall of opinion polls in India reveals that the media’s obsession with election forecasting started on a massive scale two decades back. Seat predictions of past Lok Sabha elections show that opinion polls got it right in 1996, 1998 and 1999, which provided a big boost to the polling industry.

Seat prediction was then heralded as a scientific method of forecasting the electoral fortunes of political parties. However, the success was short-lived as poll predictions in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections were completely wrong and the credibility of the polling industry took a nosedive. The situation went from bad to worse in 2009, where pollsters failed to capture the mood of voters and the Congress-led UPA formed the government for a second consecutive term.

The aim of an election survey has been to study voting behaviour and attitudes of the electorate and provide trends during elections. But the basics of election studies have been pushed aside and opinion polls and seat predictions have become sinisterly synonymous with each other.

The polling industry got an opportunity to re-establish its lost credibility during last year’s general election, and a flurry of exit polls predicted that the BJP-led NDA was set to cross the majority mark. The tone and tenor of the seat forecasting by poll pundits and media houses appeared so definitive that the actual announcement on 16 May seemed only a formality. However the results showed that pollsters once again floundered badly as none of predicted that the BJP would get a clear majority on its own (282 out of 543 seats).