Uttar Pradesh Elections 2012 Exit Polls: Take it with a pinch of salt, lime and pepper|News

Uttar Pradesh Elections 2012 Exit Polls: Take it with a pinch of salt, lime and pepper|News

By. Dr.Sasmit Patra, Allahabad:  Samajwadi Party is getting a simple majority declares an exit poll. Another gives it 141 seats and possibility of hung assembly. One exit poll gives Mayawati 128 seats and another 87.
BJP is poised to win 87 seats while another exit poll gives it 55 while the Congress could win 70 seats declares an exit poll while another gives 38. In 2007 the exit polls were proved wrong when Mayawati was given 140 odd seats but BSP ended up with a simple majority. In 2009 the exit polls were again proven wrong when Congress zoomed ahead with 22 Lok Sabha seats instead of the 7 or 8 given in the exit polls. In 2012 the exit polls will again be proven wrong. If an exit poll is proven wrong by 10% to 15%, then it is acceptable. This can be attributed to the sampling error or respondent bias as the case may be in scientific social research. But when exit polls are proven wrong up to 40% to 50%, then it calls for some serious soul searching. A television channel I was watching this evening said that they were just painting scenarios and exit polls should be taken with a pinch of salt. Well, if that’s the case then give a paan-wallah, a PCO booth owner, a taxi-wallah also the benefit of proposing an exit poll and I can assure you, their response would not be a lot dissimilar to the ones been shown on televisions  right through this evening.

I asked my car driver Ritesh Kumar this afternoon, “who is going to win UP?” Pat came his reply, “Samajwadi ayega, usi ka leher hai.” (Samajwadi Party will win, there is a wave in their favour). I ask who would come second; he says it’s the Bahujan Samaj Party. Mind you he belongs to the Dalit community himself and lives in a semi-slum and therefore has his ears on the ground. I ask him, who will come third? He hesitantly says it’s the Congress. I eye him suspiciously and ask him to tell me the truth and he confesses that it is the BJP according to him. He was wary of my Congress leanings. So I naturally assumed that he was shying away from telling me that the Congress is coming fourth as per his opinion. I asked him numbers. He was emboldened and gave SP about 140-150 seats, the BSP about 100-120 seats, the BJP about 60 to 80 seats and the Congress about 40 to 60 seats. Ritesh is an uneducated youth who has been employed with households within a three kilometer radius of his house for his entire life, since he can’t cycle beyond that radius and have lunch at his house. At the age of 38 if he could give me a structured reply, you can well imagine the awareness level of the average voter in Uttar Pradesh. They also speak on similar lines. From my barber to the milkman, my gardener to the maid, a security guard at the University to the Canteen manager. I have probably spoken to about forty persons cutting across class, caste and community and found a similar response. This response is nothing but tempered with common sense which is blowing in the wind. If you reflect, how far are they from the exit poll results anyway? Not much.

Yes, I do agree that exit polls provide us some entertainment material before the real thing arrives. They give us an opportunity to warm our seats before the heat of the counting day settles on us. It provides for better advertising, better revenue, better political potshots and several good hours of addictive television watching. But beyond the plethora of political opinions and diverse views on equally diverse subjects, I feel at times that the deliberations are that of a blindfolded man in a dark room with a dark stick trying to find a black cat and then make some sense out of it, for posterity’s sake at least.

But I also feel that exit polls this evening have also heightened the level of anticipation for the results on 6th March. One of my maternal uncles-in-law is closely associated with the Samajwadi Party. I watched some portions of the opinion polls with him this evening and he ascribed the exit polls giving Samajwadi a simple majority as the most authentic but in his heart of hearts he knows that things might play out a lot different. A faculty colleague whose brother was an ex-MLA in the BSP Government states that the BSP might get close to 130 to 150 and that the exit polls could be wrong while he privately ponders that falling below the triple digit mark is also a reality for the BSP. As a Congressman, I was denying all the exit polls and extrapolating Congress seats to about 80 to 100 but I also admit that I am nervous with the numbers.

This all makes for a tantalizing setup for the counting day and the plans for watching the early trends coming in on television is being elaborately laid out. A large room with a LCD projector beaming the television results through VGA slot along with animated discussions, dissection of minute by minute changing trends and finally endless cups of tea are on the menu. Work can take a hike for at least three quarters of the day.

But whatever the outcome, it is the triumph of Indian democracy. For the first time these elections saw the UP voter come out in large droves and vote fearlessly. There was neither threat from criminal elements nor any upper caste dominance for usurping the voting power of the lower castes. It was an election which saw Uttar Pradesh politics coming of age. It saw development plank emerging up and above the myriad caste politics and its complex arithmetic. It also saw the emergence of two young leaders – Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav virtually signaling the process of succession from Sonia Gandhi and Mulayam Singh Yadav respectively. BJP for the first time did not feature Ram Mandir on its agenda and focused on development instead of Hindutva. It was an election which was billed as the “semi-final” to the Lok Sabha elections 2014 but the manner in which it has played out leaves a lot desired when compared to its top billing.

Personally for me the Uttar Pradesh elections 2012 were a learning pad. It exposed me to the labyrinth of unknown political and complex caste equations, learning about Jatavs, Jats, Kurmis, Non-Jatavs, Rajputs, Thakurs, Brahmins, Muslims and within them Shias and Sunnis. Frankly, at times it was bewildering since Odisha thankfully does not vote on caste and hopefully never will. From the dusty bylanes of Barabanki, Shravasti, Bahraich, Balrampur, Domariyaganj, Maharajganj, Sidharth Nagar and Padrauna to the three Allahabad assembly segments namely Allahabad South, Allahabad North and Allahabad West, it has been a hands-on experience which was a thousand times its worth in gold when compared to my stint as state spokesperson in Odisha Pradesh Youth Congress, not that I count that experience any less. But, I saw in Uttar Pradesh that politics is a way of life and not an event that takes place every five years. Where mohallahs (society blocks) have party flags flying on rooftops throughout the year to mark their political affiliations. Probably this might be my penultimate article on UP Elections 2012 with just one more probably in the offing on the day the final results are out on 6th March. But wistfully when I look back, it was a time well spent in Uttar Pradesh. Let’s hope 2014 sees me in the political field in Odisha than having to watch it from the sidelines. Till 6th March then, take the exit polls with a pinch of salt, lime and pepper. Let the counting begin!

Author: Dr.Sasmit Patra is an Associate Professor, Business Management and involved in UP Elections 2012.