How opinion polls always get it wrong with Kejriwal in Delhi
It unfolded as it was expected to.
But nobody, not even the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) internal survey or India’s best exit polls, predicted the landslide victory that the party managed on Feb. 10 in the Delhi legislative assembly elections.
And it is not the first time that exit polls have inaccurately predicted AAP’s victory margin in Delhi.
In November 2013, just a year after the party was launched, most exit polls had suggested a bleak outlook for the AAP. Eventually, though, it pulled off a surprise to emerge as the second biggest party and even managed to rule Delhi for 49 days with external support from the Congress.
This time, too, the pollsters have tripped. The party is leading in as many as 67 out of 70 seats as of 1.15 PM and, in all likelihood, will end up winning more than 60 seats.
The only exit poll that managed to get even close to the actual results in both the elections is Today’s Chanakya, which predicted that the AAP would win 31 seats in 2013 and 48 seats in 2015.
“Caste plays a huge role and we have managed to create a sample size that represents these factors,” a spokesperson for Today’s Chanakya told Quartz. “In the US, they use a smaller sample size to predict polls. But in India, the sample size needs to be representative with caste and religion and in a city like Delhi, these factors continue to play a huge role while voting.”
These five charts show how exit polls have managed to get it wrong in the Delhi elections over the past two years. The upper limit of predictions made by pollsters were selected as their final forecast.
The only seven seats worth watching as Delhi counts its votes
Start counting.(Reuters/Adnan Abidi and Anindito Mukherjee)
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has a history of being underwhelming in Delhi’s elections—and often it’s been because of a crisis of leadership.
For 15 years, the BJP had no counter to Sheila Dikshit, the popular former Congress chief minister of the national capital. So, it poached the mediagenic former police officer Kiran Bedi from the Aam Admi Party (AAP) as the counter against the AAP co-founder Arvind Kejriwal less than a month before this week’s election. It was a smart gambit but may well be too little too late.
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And what initially appeared to be a cakewalk for the BJP in Delhi has turned into a closely fought war against the AAP.
For Delhi election-watchers, out of the 70 going to polls, here are the seven bellwether seats you need to watch on Feb. 10, as the results come rolling in.
Tughlakabad
Ramesh Vidhuri, the popular BJP member of legislative assembly (MLA) from this rural southern exurban seat, is now a member of parliament from south Delhi. So it falls on his nephew, Vikram Vidhuri, to keep this otherwise safe but a must-win seat in the BJP fold. AAP candidate and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) turncoat Sahi Ram is the primary rival.
Mehrauli
With the Qutub Minar in its borders, Mehrauli is the kind of volatile outer south west Delhi seat the BJP needs to defend to win majority. The party won by a 4.7% margin in 2013 but did not have enough confidence in the incumbent Parvesh Singh to win again this time. Enter former mayor of south Delhi, Sarita Chaudhary, who has been previously accused of misrepresenting credentials. She will be squaring against the AAP’s Naresh Yadav.
Karol Bagh
The BJP came five seats shy of majority in 2013 because it unexpectedly gave away competitive seats like Karol Bagh to the AAP by a 1.7% margin. In 2003 and 2008, BJP candidates won by 4% and 1.8% margins, respectively. The BJP can hardly expect to win a majority without regaining this seat in central Delhi’s commercial district dominated by the trader class.
Malviya Nagar
Somnath Bharti, the controversial law minister and poster child of pretty much everything that was wrong in the 49-day AAP administration, is up again. Last time, he won by a 9.5% margin. If he loses in this middle-class south Delhi neighbourhood dominated by politically well-informed government employees, it will be a long day for the AAP.
Vikaspuri
In this ultra-competitive western suburban seat with a large number of migrant blue-collar workers living in illegal residence enclaves, the legality of occupation is a bargaining chip for all political parties in every election cycle. In the last two election cycles, the victor had a winning margin of less than 1,000 votes—that’s about 0.5%.
R K Puram
If the AAP wins 40+ seats in the 70-seat assembly, as some polls are predicting, this posh New Delhi seat is a must-win. In 2013, the BJP’s Anil Sharma won the seat by 326 votes or 0.4%—the narrowest margin of any Delhi constituency. Sharma defeated AAP candidate Shazia Ilmi, who has recently defected to the BJP. So the AAP has now brought in Pramila Tokas, wife of 2013 BSP candidate Dheeraj Tokas. That might be a smart move since the BSP had cornered 9.7% of the vote in 2013.
Greater Kailash
This is the bellwether seat to judge the fortunes of the deflated Congress, which is otherwise an afterthought this election cycle. Sharmistha Mukherjee, president Pranab Mukherjee’s daughter is running in the middle-class haven, which also happens to include CR Park, the centre of Delhi’s ethnic Bengali community. Mukherjee is a Bengali but it might not help. Neophyte AAP MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj won the seat comfortably by 13.8% margin in 2013. As per custom, the BJP has fielded a weak candidate—a local councillor, against the president’s daughter.
And some others
The election for the AAP will be won and lost in competitive outer Delhi seats like Rohini and Sangram Vihar, where the AAP candidates won by less than 1% margin in 2013. Similarly-won BJP held seats like Gokalpur and Matiala are also crucial.
Also, watch out for Matia Mahal. The fortunes of the AAP will mirror how it does in this Muslim-dominated neighbourhood of old Delhi, right off Jama Masjid. The AAP came third in a four-cornered free-for-all in 2013, only 4,100 votes behind the winning Janata Dal (United) candidate.
Anna’s sidekick to Delhi’s messiah: Arvind Kejriwal’s meteoric rise to power
Transformed.(AP Photo/ Rajesh Kumar Singh)
Arvind Kejriwal has transformed Indian politics—and in the process, the Aam Aadmi Party leader has also managed to transform how the media views him.
From a vocal anti-corruption campaigner to an upstart politician, here is how the press has described Kejriwal’s rite of passage that has now culminated in his becoming Delhi’s chief minister for the second time.
“Hazare’s chief arbitrator”
“In the words of exasperated government negotiators who spent hours trying to reason with him in the last two days, Hazare’s chief arbitrator calibrated each condition to remote-control the anger on the streets.”
“When questions are posed to Kejriwal, he responds like an impassioned professor explaining a complicated problem—piling detail upon detail with the supreme confidence that his answer is the correct one. His essential message never changes: only a powerful independent anti-corruption agency, with wide-ranging authority and minimal government interference, can cure the plague of graft—and anything less will fail.”
— A Caravan profile titled The Insurgent, September 2011
“Prominent activist and key Anna associate”
“Prominent activist and key Anna associate Arvind Kejriwal claimed the income-tax notice asking him to pay dues of 9 lakh to the government is prompted by “political bosses” and without merit.”
— A New Yorker profile titled The Agitator, September 2013
“Giant-killer”
“Giant-killer Arvind Kejriwal, who defeated three-time Chief Minister and Congress stalwart Sheila Dikshit in the New Delhi constituency, is nothing short of a political sensation, and his personal victory can be compared to the maverick Raj Narain’s electoral win over prime minister Indira Gandhi in the historic 1977 general election.”
“Arvind Kejriwal is the antithesis of the modern-day Indian politician. He’s no Hindu nationalist, he doesn’t have a famous surname, and no, there is no evidence that he has made money from politics.”
“While AAP supporters welcomed Kejriwal with flowers, there were also posters in and outside the railway station that labelled the former Delhi chief minister as ‘bhagoda’ (deserter).”
“Arvind Kejriwal, the poster boy of new-age politics who had fired the imagination of the country with a spectacular debut in Delhi assembly elections, will now have to go in for some serious introspection. Drawing a blank in his party’s original karmabhoomi Delhi and a grand total of four seats is not what he had promised in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections 2014.”
“He also wore his trademark muffler (scarf or neck-wrap) in most of his public appearances during his stint and even after resigning. The AAP leader is once again campaigning to win the upcoming Delhi state assembly elections. And the muffler is back again this winter – not only around his neck but also on Twitter. The hashtag “MufflerMan” has been trending on Twitter for the last few days.”
“As every opinion poll reveals, Modi is still the hero of the middle-class and the rich, but Kejriwal has become the messiah of the masses. To carry on with the Bachchan metaphor, Modi is now the Amitabh of the multiplexes while Kejriwal has usurped the role of the Vijay of single-screen cinemas.”
