Karnataka Elections 2023: Why you should take the recent opinion polls with a pinch of salt

The northeastern states of Nagaland, Tripura and Meghalaya were the first to have assembly polls in 2023.

The season of opinion polls is back with the Karnataka elections due on May 10. Opinion polls quench the thirst of the public eager to understand which way the wind is blowing. However, their accuracy has always been a point of debate. In the first-past-the-post system, getting the seat share predictions right has always been tough for the survey agencies.

Hung Assembly. Really?

Four agencies released their results on Wednesday with two indicating a hung assembly and one of them suggesting BJP could be the single largest party. The data in this case could also be old – a week to 10 days – as it takes time to process the responses and hence may not reflect the actual ground reality.

Karnataka poll results are expected on May 13.  Source ABP News

Most survey agencies follow a top-down approach: They arrive at the overall/statewide vote-share of parties, and then arrive at the seat tally on the basis of a vote-share to seat-share multiple. They don’t follow a bottom-up approach, predicting the winner of each seat and then arrive at the final tally and this is where they go wrong.

Not So Credible

An analysis of data of 13 opinion polls for the 2018 Karnataka assembly elections shows that only two of them got it right in terms of direction, that is who is likely to win or emerge as single largest party (SLP). Ten of the 13 predicted that Congress would be the SLP while one of them (C fore) projected it would win. This despite the fact that a strong trend exists in Karnataka of no incumbent chief minister ever winning re-election for nearly four decades.

Opinion Poll Predictions for KarnatakaSource: Wikipedia, News Reports

A similar analysis of seven opinion polls for the Uttar Pradesh 2022 elections shows most of them couldn’t get the seat predictions for BJP right and were predicting a much stiffer competition. In Gujarat, all four polls couldn’t predict the BJP landslide.

Local And The National

In elections, the total number of votes an individual gets is the summation of support he/she receives on the basis of party(symbol), leadership(state/central) and the image/personality of the (local) candidate. The bigger the election, the lesser the role of the candidate.

In elections for the sarpanch, it is the strength of the individual candidate and not the party which backs him/her, which is the determining factor. Whereas in Lok Sabha elections, the leadership or the Prime Ministerial face plays a bigger role.

For the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, 37 percent of respondents said the PM candidate was the most important factor, 25 percent said local candidate, and 22 percent said party in an IndiaToday-AxisMyIndia post-poll survey.

Assembly Polls More Local

On the other hand, in a Vidhan Sabha election the role of the local candidate is very important. An analysis of surveys done by CSDS-Lokniti for ten states which went to polls in 2022 (last year) and in 2018 along with Karnataka, shows that for close to 40 percent voters, the local candidate mattered the most while deciding whom to vote for. For Karnataka the corresponding number was 33.6 percent.

Till the time all the major parties announce their candidates, and closer to the last date of withdrawal, April 24 in the case of Karnataka Elections, it is very difficult to predict who is ahead on the particular seat. Disgruntled leaders/aspirants denied tickets could switch parties taking a crucial chunk of votes along with them. Sometimes they stay within the party and either sabotage prospects of the official candidate or do not canvas wholeheartedly.

While Congress has announced candidates for 124 seats and JD(S) 93 seats, BJP is yet to announce its candidates. Also, the caste dynamics/combination is finalised only once all the major candidates are known.

Note here in this table the percentage of respondents who said the local candidate was the most deciding factor for polling

Source: CSDS Post Poll Surveys.*Telangana data is based on pre-poll surveys.

Generally, the opinion polls done very early to the polling date are less accurate than the polls conducted very close to the polling date. Compared to opinion polls, the accuracy of exit polls is higher as it is conducted once the polling is done. In the same example, for Karnataka 4/7 exit polls were correct in terms of direction and / or seat tally.

How it all stacks up for Karnataka

So don’t take opinion polls too seriously, take it with a pinch of salt.