The Verdict - Decoding India's Elections
-- Prannoy Roy & Dorab R. Sopariwala
The authors are pioneer pollsters in India, who have been in the business of conducting opinion polls for the last few decades. The Verdict is a bunch of theories and inferences that the authors have come up with, by analysing the data that they got from Election Commission of India and various private organisations that conducted opinion/exit polls in India, since Independence.
-- Prannoy Roy & Dorab R. Sopariwala
The authors are pioneer pollsters in India, who have been in the business of conducting opinion polls for the last few decades. The Verdict is a bunch of theories and inferences that the authors have come up with, by analysing the data that they got from Election Commission of India and various private organisations that conducted opinion/exit polls in India, since Independence.
They tried to delve into questions like, Is there any pro-incumbency or anti-incumbency in India, in general? Does women's vote matter? Are there any differences between National and State elections in terms of voter's choice? How did opinion/exit polls do in India, so far? Are elections truly representative in India? etc.,
The good thing about the analysis that they presented is, it's data driven. None of their theories are hypotheses. The not-so-good part is, the patterns that they identified significantly changed every 20-25 years, in the last 70 years. So, readers may be able to appreciate the patterns (as numbers strongly support them), but that may not help in forecasting or even understanding the current state, as those patterns are not very long-lived.
Some of the patterns like, a gradual change from pro-incumbency (first 20 years after Independence, being an infant democracy, supported leaders that were part of freedom struggle) to anti-incumbency (impatient electorate that didn't see any significant development) to perform-or-perish (mature electorate that rewards performers) are easy to appreciate, and the progression sounds like it would continue. But, there are others like effect of women voters, difference between urban/rural voters, that sound like just some correlation and may be, some pointers for politicians to work on.
There was a lot of discussion about methodologies to conduct opinion polls, how diversity and size of India make it difficult to come up with manageable and reliable sample size, compared to other democracies. Despite that, the authors' claim to have a great record in conducting opinion polls.
Another important aspect that's discussed is first-past-the-post system of Indian elections. As per that, a candidate need not get majority of votes (more than 50%). All one needs is, at least one vote higher than the candidate with second highest number of votes. Does it make it sill a representative democracy! Even if keep such larger questions aside, this opens up scope for transient, seed-funded candidates/parties with a clear mandate to divide voters of a particular candidate/party that's currently No-1, to help the candidate/party that's currently No-2. Such things have been tried successfully in the recent past. Pre-poll alliances of parties do just the opposite of that in multi-party democracies, which also have been tried out in the recent past, where No-2 and No-3 join to topple No-1.
The discussion around how vote share gets converted into seats, how religion/caste, region, minorities, distribution/concentration of vote share are working for/against the representative spirit of democracy, is interesting.
It's a quick and interesting read to get an idea about, not just opinion/exit polls, but about all the Parliament and Assembly elections held in Independent India in the last 7 decades.
There was a lot of discussion about methodologies to conduct opinion polls, how diversity and size of India make it difficult to come up with manageable and reliable sample size, compared to other democracies. Despite that, the authors' claim to have a great record in conducting opinion polls.
Another important aspect that's discussed is first-past-the-post system of Indian elections. As per that, a candidate need not get majority of votes (more than 50%). All one needs is, at least one vote higher than the candidate with second highest number of votes. Does it make it sill a representative democracy! Even if keep such larger questions aside, this opens up scope for transient, seed-funded candidates/parties with a clear mandate to divide voters of a particular candidate/party that's currently No-1, to help the candidate/party that's currently No-2. Such things have been tried successfully in the recent past. Pre-poll alliances of parties do just the opposite of that in multi-party democracies, which also have been tried out in the recent past, where No-2 and No-3 join to topple No-1.
The discussion around how vote share gets converted into seats, how religion/caste, region, minorities, distribution/concentration of vote share are working for/against the representative spirit of democracy, is interesting.
It's a quick and interesting read to get an idea about, not just opinion/exit polls, but about all the Parliament and Assembly elections held in Independent India in the last 7 decades.
