Tag: Today Group

By A Correspondent

We don’t know what’s your view, but for us, the ultimate accolade is when your competition compliments you. On Tuesday evening, while analysing the landslide sweep of Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party in the Delhi Assembly elections, first former psephologist Yogendra Yadav saluted pollsters Axis-My-India for getting the Delhi numbers right yet again, and then NDTV founder Dr Prannoy Roy was very generous in his praise for India Today group Chairman and Managing Director Aroon Purie for his guts for letting the Axis-My-India folks to give the far-out numbers and not interfere (in carrying them as is). There was of course a nice laugh about the jig that Axis Founder and Chief Pradeep Gupta and India Today Consulting Editor Rajdeep Sardesai did on air which has been doing the viral.

According to the information we have received, the India Today Group-Axis-My-India exit polls have got 33 out of 35 elections bang-on over the last four years. Yadav specifically hailed the polling agency for its Haryana poll results late last year. For Delhi, the exit poll aired on India Today anticipated the Aam Aadmi Party’s sweep in the February 8 vote, giving it between 59 and 68 seats in the 70-member Delhi Assembly. Its nearest rival, the BJP and its allies, were projected to get 2 to 11 seats and the Congress none. By Tuesday evening, the predictions turned out to be pretty accurate, with the AAP securing 62, the BJP 8 and the Congress knocked out for a duck.

Noted a communique: “In Delhi the pollsters measured voting behaviours, preferences and predispositions of the city’s diverse demography. Like a thorough statistical exercise, the survey delved deeper into the voters’ educational background, economic conditions, work, age-groups, caste, and religious affiliations. Since 2013, Axis My India has conducted 40 post-poll surveys, of which 38 have been spot on. Since their association with India Today in 2016, the pollsters have predicted 35 elections, of which 33 turned out to be accurate.:

Said Kalli Purie, Vice Chairperson, India Today Group: “Every time we get a poll right the stakes get higher. This was our fifthy poll bang-on. The trust put in us by our viewers is a big responsibility and makes us work harder (and gives us many sleepless nights!). People keep asking me what’s the secret sauce that even your bitterest competitor quote and copy your poll. The answer is simple. We wear glasses with no colour when we look at data. Data is always neutral. The partnership of the best data input from Axis and serious ground reporting from our team before every election has made this incredible feat possible. Having an unparalleled platform with the combined muscle of broadcast, digital and social also helps a little‼”

Added Gupta while attributing his successful predictions to team work and scientific monitoring of voter behaviour: “We follow international best practices. Our methodology is highly refined that helps us eliminate margins of error,” adding: “Our sampling is the most demographically and politically representative in any given election. There’s zero tolerance for any compromise on quality. That’s perhaps the reason why the Harvard Business School is doing a case study on Axis-My-India for the GE 2019 predictions.”