The problem with pre-poll surveys in India

• On October 9, the Chancellor of Austria, Sebastian Kurz, was forced to resign amidst a unique scandal.
• He was charged with orchestrating fake surveys and bribing the news media to show them as genuine opinion polls.
• It is a reflection of the growing “weaponisation” of opinion polls in electoral democracies.

Role of Opinion poll in Indian elections of 2019

• Out of every 100 Indians who voted in the 2019 national elections, only 35 were committed voters, who were sure of which party to vote for even before the campaign began.
• The remaining 65 voters decided who to vote for in the last few days or weeks before election day (Lokniti National Election Study).
• So, 65 per cent of Indian voters make their voting decisions quite late in an election.
• Further, a significant 43 per cent of these non-committed voters make their choice based on hawa — on who they think is likely to win.
• That is, in effect, nearly 30 per cent (43 per cent of the 65 per cent non-committed voters) of all Indian voters — a significantly large number, especially when winning margins in India’s multi-party elections are small.

Rigged polls and democracy

• A rigged pre-poll survey disguised as an independent, scientific study by a professional survey agency and spread widely by a compliant and compromised media can play a powerful role in creating a “wind of victory” for a particular party and influence a large number of floating voters to vote for that party.
• Since these polls carry a veneer of objectivity, voters are more easily misled.
• Thus, fake opinion polls can be extremely potent weapons in Indian elections.
• Opinion polls propagated by a compromised media is a powerful weapon in Indian elections, deployed actively by some political parties.
• A rigged opinion poll disseminated widely with the potential to sway 30 per cent of the vote is as dangerous to India’s democracy as social media fake news, if not more.

Suggestions

• There have been calls to ban pre-poll surveys in India by some scholars and political leaders, which may be an extreme step.
• However, the Election Commission can help voters detect fake opinion polls by setting some standards and guidelines.
• Any opinion poll that does not reveal its survey methodology, sample selection technique, sample size and exact questionnaire should be considered suspect.
• A robust survey will also make its entire raw data public, for people to use and replicate the analysis.
• Most polls published by the Indian media, barring a tiny few, do not disclose even basic details of their survey methods, let alone publishing their data.
• Most people judge a survey purely on their sample size with the assumption that a large sample size signifies a good survey.
• The notion of a sample size is highly misunderstood.
• To survey a state election in India, a robust sampling methodology should choose people from every assembly constituency, identity, age group and gender.
• As a rough thumb rule, a credible survey for a state election in a vastly diverse, multi-party, first-past-the-post democracy like India will need to survey 500-1,000 randomly chosen people from every assembly constituency, in order to predict seats with reasonable accuracy.
• The Election Commission can mandate disclosure of detailed survey methods, raw data and prescribe minimum stratified sampling standards for pre-poll surveys.