MxMIndia

Tag: Exit Polls

  • We bring you numbers supplied by BARC on viewership of English & Hindi news channels on Counting Week and specifically around the Exit Polls and on Counting Day

    How India Watched on Counting Day

     

    image above and date sheets below courtesy BARC India

    By A Correspondent

    The viewership numbers for the all-important Counting Day week, and the Counting Day specifically came in yesterday (Thu, May 30) from BARC, and responding to an MxMIndia request for a special slice on Counting Day, BARC supplies us with the following data sheets:

     

    Note: P4W Avg points to the average of the previous four weeks, and in the charts below G/D refers to Growth or Decrease. It may also be noted that Aaj Tak, ABP News and India TV were ranked #1, #2 and #10 respectively across the entire universe of satellite television channels measured by BARC… the GECs included

     

     

     

     

     

    It may be noted that these refer to all India numbers. Some channels have been slicing data further. India Today TV has been quoting numbers for the six megacities as against all-India with the reasoning it’s the big cities which matter to advertisers. There have also been reports of landing pages, Dual LCNs and channels airing the space occupied by their group channels to increase numbers.

  • Either editors don't listen to what reporters tell them or reporters doctor their reports to fit newsroom ideas, rues Ranjona Banerji

    Time to show the door to Exit Polls?

     

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Uttar Pradesh

    Exit Polls

    Today’s Chanakya: BJP+ 285, SP Congress 88, BSP 27

    Times Now-VMR: BJP+ 190-210, SP-Congress 110-130, BSP 57-74

    India News-MRC: BJP+ 185, SP-Congress 120, BSP 90

    India Today-Axis: BJP+ 251-279, SP-Congress 88-112, BSP 28-42

    India TV-CVoter: BJP+ 155-167, SP-Congress 135-147, BSP 81-93

    ABP-Lokniti CSDS: BJP+ 164-176, SP-Congress 155-169, BSP 60-72

    Voters: BJP+ 325, SP-Congress 54, BSP 19

     

    Punjab

    Exit polls

    Today’s Chanakya: AAP 54, Congress 54, SAD-BJP 9

    India Today-Axis: AAP 42-51, Congress 62-71, SAD-BJP 4-7

    ABP-Lokniti CSDS: AAP 36-46, Congress 46-56, SAD-BJP 19-27

    India TV-CVoter: AAP 59-67, Congress 41-49, SAD-BJP 5-13

    Voters: AAP 22, Congress 77, SAD-BJP 18

     

    Uttarakhand

    Exit Polls

    Today’s Chanakya BJP 53, Congress 15

    India TV-CVoter BJP 29-35, Congress 29-35

    India Today-Axis BJP 46-53, Congress 12-21

    Voters: BJP 57, Congress 11

     

    Manipur

    Exit Polls

    India TV-CVoter: BJP 25-31, Congress 17-23

    NewsX-MRC: BJP 16-32, Congress 30-36

    Voters: BJP 21, Congress 28

     

    Goa

    Exit Polls

    India TV-CVoter: BJP 15-21, Congress 12-18, AAP 4

    NewsX-MRC BJP 15, Congress 10, AAP 7

    Voters: Congress 18, BJP 14, AAP 0

     

    Should one start by being kind? Scour through the exit polls to see who got it nearly right? Take UP. Everyone suggested that there was a surge for the BJP, especially from Phase 4 of voting onwards. In that sense, all the exit polls were correct. The BJP was the winner. But if one wanted a general idea of who was winning, why would you do an exit poll? The best that the exit polls gave the BJP in Uttar Pradesh was 285, from Today’s Chanakya. The Samajwadi Party and Congress alliance was not doing so badly according to the pollsters and apart from Today’s Chanakya, everyone else thought Mayawati and the BSP might come up with some decent numbers.

     

    The voters had other ideas altogether. In fact, the voters’ ideas were so different from the pollsters’ ideas that it is unfair to even say that Today’s Chanakya is the winner because it got it so wrong. Unless my arithmetic is very faulty, the BJP’s final tally beat Today’s Chanakya’s forecast by 40 seats. Mayawati and the BSP managed a pretty dismal tally of 19 seats and the Samajwadi Party and Congress could not do better than 54. That is, even Today’s Chanakya gave the BSP eight seats more than it would get and every exit poll gave the SP-Congress combine much more than the voters did. The lowest was Today’s Chanakya with 88 and minus 54 from that and you get it wrong by 34 seats.

     

    Don’t want to do it statewise because it’s so tedious? Take the AamAadmi Party’s seat-gathering ability then. According to our crystal ballgazers, Arvind Kejriwal’s push for a middle class, corruption-free India would win between 71 (CVoter, Punjab plus Goa) and 36 (ABP-Lokinit CSDS only Punjab) seats in two states. What did AAP win? A total of 22 seats in Punjab and zero in Goa.

     

    To say that there is a serious need for the media and for exit pollsters to relook at their methodology is a gross understatement. It may be better to admit that you have no idea what is going on that to get it so wrong. Many journalists one spoke to privately admitted just as much. In the end, even ground reports did not suggest the sort of victory that the BJP got in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. And while everyone was sure that the SAD-BJP alliance was going to lose Punjab, everyone also expected a bigger chunk of Punjab going to AAP.

     

    It is interesting, as an aside, to see how much our national media cares about India’s smaller states. Only two exit polls each were conducted for Manipur and Goa and it is as ever significant that both polls did not get it right.

     

    Today, after the results are out, hindsight has made us all wiser and some of us, illogically but egotistically, prescient. In fact, all that is rubbish. There is something going on in the Indian voters’ mind which is not being picked up by the media. You can choose between love for NarendraModi (UP and Uttarakhand but not Punjab, Goa and Manipur), joy over demonetisation, no joy over demonetisation, Hindu consolidation, the end of caste, the end of the Muslim vote, shoddy electronic voting machines and the arrival of new voters from Mars.

     

    Either editors in newsrooms do not listen to what their reporters tell them or reporters doctor their reports to fit in with newsroom ideas. Or, even worse and even more likely, few national newsrooms have enough people on the ground thanks to cost-cutting and the low value given to newsgathering by managements. That is why so many newsrooms houses rely so strongly on exit polls to do the work that they can no longer do. One cannot be certain that it is working. In fact, one can be perfectly sure that it is not.

    No?

     

  • Do we really need these polls with only a day-and-a-half for the results? Anything for a day’s viewership. And anything for some pre-election mood build-up, writes Shailesh Kapoor

    Shailesh Kapoor: Poll Of Polls: When Exit Polls become too many to handle

    By Shailesh Kapoor

     

    It’s the big election results day tomorrow (March 11), with counting and results in several states, including two that carry massive interest: UP and Punjab.

     

    Exit Poll predictions were released last evening across news channels. The last phase of UP elections ended on Wednesday, but since some bypolls were scheduled for Thursday, news channels had to wait that one extra day before releasing the Exit Poll findings.

     

    Exit Polls have become a bit of a mathematical maze in recent years. There are 8-10 different polls, co-branded with two entities – one a media house or a media brand, and second a research or psephology firm. The results can vary significantly at times, to the extent of comfortably changing the predicted winner. Some of these polls give a “range”, while others predict an exact number of seats (error margins may be documented, but no one cares about those details, as anyone in the forecasting business will tell you).

     

     

    The new entity in recent years that adds to the maze is one called the “Poll of Polls”. It’s a simple average of all available polls, taken to find a level that’s generally seen as acceptable, because it presumably reduces the overall error margin by leveling things up. That notion (that the error margin reduces via this method) may not exactly be true, but it’s a viewer-friendly thought nevertheless, riding on simplification a a central thought.

     

    About a decade ago, channels and newspapers fiercely protected their work, not wanting others to share their data, and not sharing theirs in return. But in recent times, this has changed, primarily because this multi-source approach hedges their bets. Some channels have had egg on their face in the past, because they stood by some numbers their Exit Poll predicted, only to be found way off the mark on the results day.

     

    So now, even if a channel has its own poll, they share that as one of the data sources. It may get considerable weightage and attention, because they will have better demographic cuts and detailing available inhouse. But the larger story is still projected based on the Poll of Polls. So, it’s routine to see names of competitive channels being spoken (and on the screen) on such days. Last evening, for example, ‘Times Now’ was very visible on NDTV 24X7.

     

    Some channels have stopped commissioning their own polls, well knowing that there will be enough and more available to bite into. In any case, the entire exercise, such as the one last evening, is laden with confusion. For example, while it is amply clear that BJP-SAD will struggle in Punjab, and may end up with single-digit seats, the polls just could not conclude who will win the state. And while most polls suggested BJP would be comfortably the single-largest party in UP, at least one gave a very different picture, putting SP in front.

     

    Politicians, of course, take a stance of acceptance or denial, depending on how the results suit them. Sometimes, they can take a stance of whole-hearted acceptance on one state and a stance of complete denial on another, within seconds of each other. Very few like Yogendra Yadav actually understand how it’s all done. “Expert” comments on Exit Polls are thus largely political rhetoric, devoid of any statistical or rational view on the data.

     

    Do we really need these polls with only a day-and-a-half for the results? Anything for a day’s viewership. And anything for some pre-election mood build-up.

     

    On a lighter note, I wonder what would happen if all channels decide to stop their own Exit Polls and rely on the Poll of Polls, which would then not exist to begin with?