– Yogesh Kumar Goyal
With the conclusion of the voting process for the Karnataka assembly elections, all the survey agencies have broadcast their respective exit polls. Most of the exit polls have predicted a clear majority or close to majority for the Congress in Karnataka, but there are some exit polls which have predicted a lead over the Congress or a win for the BJP.
News Nation-CGS exit poll gives 114 seats to BJP and 86 to Congress while Suvarna News-Jan Ki Baat poll gives BJP 106 and Congress 98 seats, News 18-Rajneeti poll gives BJP 100 and Congress 92 It is estimated that seats will be available. On the other hand, India Today-Axis My India exit poll gives Congress 135 and BJP 85, News 24-Today’s Chanakya poll gives Congress 120 and BJP 92, India-CNX poll gives Congress 115 and BJP 85, Congress 113 and BJP 85 in Times Now-ETG poll, Zee News poll Congress 108 and BJP 86, Poll of Polls Congress 107 and BJP 92, ABP-C Voter’s poll Congress 106 And 89 seats for BJP, 104 seats for Congress and 93 seats for BJP in TV9-Pollstrat and 101 seats for Congress and 92 seats for BJP in RepublicBlick P-Mark’s exit poll. The thing to see is that there is a big difference in the figures of many of these exit polls and at the same time there is a big game of plus-minus involved in them. This is the reason why the claims made in exit polls are no longer trusted blindly because they are only predictions of election results and so far it has happened many times when the results of various exit polls have been predicted. Quite the opposite.
Although the history of conducting election surveys is very old and such surveys are conducted in many countries of the world. For the first time in the world, to know the opinion of the people on the functioning of the American government, the election survey was started in America. At that time, this method was adopted by George Gallup and Claude Robinson, who are considered to be the father of opinion poll survey. After observing the results that came out after the election, he found that there was not much difference between the samples collected by him and the election results. His method became very famous. Impressed by this, Britain and France also adopted it and opinion poll surveys were conducted on a large scale in Britain in 1937 while in France in 1938. In those countries also the results of the opinion poll proved to be absolutely accurate. In Germany, Denmark, Belgium and Ireland, where pre-election surveys have been given complete freedom, in some countries like China, South Korea, Mexico, etc., it is allowed but with certain conditions.
Exit poll means the blueprint of pre-election survey was drawn in India in the year 1960. It was then prepared by the ‘Centre for the Study of Developing Societies’ (CSDS). However, it is believed that the exit poll was started by the Dutch sociologist and former politician Marcel von Dam, who used it for the first time on February 15, 1967, and at that time his assessment was absolutely accurate in the elections held in the Netherlands. . The introduction of exit polls in India is credited to Eric D’Costa, head of the Indian Institute of Public Opinion, who is believed to be the first to use this method to gauge public mood during elections. Eric D’Costa was the first to know the attitude of the public through this type of survey during elections. They were initially published through magazines in the country, while election surveys hit the big screen in 1996 when Doordarshan allowed CSDS to conduct exit polls across the country.
In India, pre-election surveys were aired on most of the TV channels in the year 1998 and then they became very popular, but opinion polls and exit polls were banned by the Election Commission in 1999 on the demand of some political parties to ban them. Was. After that a newspaper approached the Supreme Court and the apex court quashed the decision of the Election Commission. Just before the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, the demand for banning exit polls arose once again and when the demand gained momentum, the Election Commission wrote to the Law Ministry to immediately bring an ordinance to amend the law regarding the ban. wrote. Thereafter, the Representation of the People Act, 1951 was amended to ensure that exit polls cannot be published or telecast in any form during the electoral process until the final vote is cast. This is the reason why exit polls are shown only after the voting process is over.
Exit polls cannot be broadcast until at least half an hour after the polling is over. They can be broadcast only after the voting for the last round of elections is over. In such a situation, it is important to know that why the broadcast-publication of exit polls is allowed only after the completion of the voting process? Under Section 126A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, there should not be any such act during polling, which will have any effect on the psychology of voters or influence their decision to vote. This is the reason why exit polls cannot be made public before voting or during the voting process, but can be published or broadcast only half an hour after the completion of the voting process. Violation of this rule can result in imprisonment of up to two years or fine or both. If an election is held in multiple phases, then the exit polls can be broadcast only after the last phase of polling, but before that the data is collected on the polling day of each phase.
Electoral surveys are done before the exit polls and in the survey, the victory and defeat of various political parties and candidates are assessed by talking to the voters who have voted in many polling areas. Most of the media organizations conduct exit polls in collaboration with some professional agencies. These agencies try to know from the voters immediately after the voting, for whom they used their vote. On the basis of the multiplication and division of those figures, the loss-win is estimated. The broad results that are drawn from the survey conducted on this basis are called ‘exit polls’. Since these types of surveys are limited to a certain number of voters, exit poll estimates are not always accurate. Exit polls are actually nothing but the voter’s inclination only, through which it is estimated that in which direction the results may be inclined. The claims of exit polls are not considered to have much scientific basis because they are prepared on the basis of talking to a few thousand people. In fact, these are only approximate figures and it is not necessary that the voter has told the surveyors exactly what is in his mind. This is the reason why questions have often been raised about the credibility of exit polls.
(The author is a senior journalist)
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