Madhya Pradesh Exit Polls

The Madhya Pradesh Exit polls sound very confusing,so we use back of envelope methods to determine who is likely to be most accurate on Tuesday.

The CrowdWisdom Criteria

In Gujarat election where BJP was the incumbent (Incumbent bias), this is what happened

– BJP supporters overprojected their performance by 26%

– Congress supporters were accurate in predicting the performance of BJP

What are those numbers in Madhya Pradesh exit polls ?

– BJP Supporters prediction for BJP in MP = 126, 26% over prediction = 100

– Congress Supporters Prediction for BJP in MP = 96

There are 4 Pollsters close to these numbers.

News 24, C-Voter, CSDS and Today’s Chanakya

Big 4 Consensus

The variation amongst the Big-4 pollsters isn’t much. Big-4 include – CSDS, C-Voter, Today’s Chanakya and Axis

It is between 113-125 for Congress

In Karnataka it was a massive 85-120, In Gujarat it was 106 to 135, UP it was 161 to 285, In Punjab 45 to 67.

What about Jan Ki Baat?

The question is what about Jan Ki Baat? They have a pretty good track record in recent times. In fact, the gap between Crowdwisdom and Jan Ki Baat is very low (CW-114 vs JKB 118 and same 105 for Congress), so if Jan Ki Baat is right, CrowdWisdom’s predictors together will have got this very close. So yes, we root for Jan Ki Baat!

Jan Ki Baat got Karnataka right along with CNX. The average for BJP was 102 in Karnataka and JKB went with 105. In MP however, the average is 108  while JKB is nearly 10 higher. So we refer to another election, Tripura (9% error).  In Tripura, their gap with Axis was about 7 Seats, it is the same here. Both of them had 7-9% error but in different directions. In Tripura, JKB was off the mainstream average by just 5%, versus 9% here.

Let us now revisit Gujarat. JKB Posted 123 versus an average of 116. The final score was 99.

So JKB has done a reasonable job but relies heavily on not straying away from the averages and the averages themselves coming right.

Can CNX get it right?

In theory, nothing stops CNX from getting it right this one time irrespective of how they performed in the past. Stil, let us look at their record

Gujarat – 135-139 ( Actual 99)

Karnataka – 106 (Actual 104)

Bihar – 135 (Actual 178)

CNX got Karnataka right but so did a couple of other polls. If CNX gets Madhya Pradesh right, it will be the first time that they will be the only polling firm to have gotten an election right. Is that possible? Yes! Is it likely? Statistically, No!

Overall, it is quite stacked up against BJP and the only hope lies in the fact that past efficiency in predicting an election provides limited evidence of future success, so as a BJP supporter keep your expectations low but don’t give up, there is still hope. As a Congress supporter, feel good but remember Ravi Shastri (or whoever said this) – It is not over until it is over.

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