BJP sweeping pre-poll surveys: Take them with a bucket of salt

Here we go again. One more poll that purports to tell us how the elections will pan out. An NDTV pre-poll survey, that aired last night, claims that the BJP would sweep Karnataka and Maharashtra, among other findings. [caption id=“attachment_1434205” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  AFP[/caption] Remember the incredible statement by the then United States Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld? “Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don’t know.” When one looks at the forthcoming elections, what is clear is that there are hardly any known knowns – but there are many, many known unknowns – which is things we know that we do not know. Here are some known unknowns:

• We do not know how many seats will be contested by major parties
• We do not know the final shape of pre-poll alliances
• We do not know the constituencies that major politicians will fight from
• We do not know the potential of rebels in each party
• We do not know what the voter turnout will be
• We do not know whether the efforts of the Election Commission of India to increase voter turnout will bear fruit
• We do not know how the first time voter will vote
• We do not know how many direct contests there will be and how many will be contested by more than three (major) contestants

Yet we see poll after poll authoritatively churning out numbers as if they were the truth. Forget about the known unknowns for a moment and get to the known knowns. “Elections to the Lok Sabha are not yet close. An analysis of the past four elections reveals that the median victory margin has hovered between 7% and 10%. In other words, in the 2009 election, more than half the constituencies were decided by more than 7% of total polled votes. The winning margin for a constituency is calculated as the winner’s votes minus the runner-up’s votes divided by the total number of votes polled. The 2004 election was even more decisive—half the constituencies in that election were decided by a margin of 10% or over,” Mint had analysed last year. We know that the median victory margin in 2009 was between 7 and 10 percent We know that in 2009, the difference in the number of votes secured by the Congress and the saffron party was only 8.9 million in places where the BJP finished second. The Congress added 90 seats to its tally because of this factor. We know that in 2009, 36 candidates won by a margin of less than 1 percent of the votes cast. We know that six seats were won by a margin of less than 1000 votes And after looking at the known unknowns and the known knowns – there’s another. known known that is born. We know that all these polls can be taken with bucketsful of salt.