New poll predicts Congress sweep in Bangalore
A pre-poll survey of the 89 constituencies going to the elections on Saturday is predicting 42-45 seats for the Congress, 22-24 for the BJP, and 19-21 for the JDS, 0-1 for the BSP. In 2004, the JDS had bagged 34 seats, Congress 19, BJP 10 in the 9 districts, not counting Chikkaballapur and Ramanagara/m.
The Congress is expected to get a voteshare of 39 per cent, BJP 24 per cent, JDS 22 per cent.
In Bangalore, where the number of seats has shot up from 12 to 28, the poll predicts 17-18 for the Congress, 9-10 for the BJP, and 0-1 for the JDS, others are predicted to get 0-1. In 2004, when there were 12 seats, the Congress had 8, BJP 3 and JDS 1.
The survey has been conducted for the New Indian Express, Kannada Prabha and Suvarna News by the polling agency C-Fore. The sample size was 3,000 randomly chosen voters. The margin of error is +/- 3 per cent, according to pollster Premchand Palety.
# Asked which party coming to power was better for Karnataka, 42 per cent respondents said Congress, 29 per cent said BJP, and 24 per cent said JDS.
# Respondents said the most important issues facing them in the election was drinking water (25%), infrastructure (21%), price rise (18%), corruption (10%).
# 57 per cent said the BJP-JDS coalition was better than the Congress-JDS coalition (43 per cent). 53 per cent said the JDS was not right to pull the plug in its alliance with BJP, while 21 per cent agreed with the move.
# Asked if there was a need for a regional party in Karnataka as articulated by former chief minister H.D. Kumaraswamy, 66 per cent said no, 34 per cent said yes.
Also read: Each one take one, polls to please all
Our fate is ‘hung’ as score reads 1-1 in war of polls
Tags: BJP, C-Fore, Churumuri, Congress, H.D. Kumaraswamy, JDS, Kannada Prabha, Karnataka Elections, New Indian Express, Premchand Palety, Suvarna News
7 May 2008 at 10:34 pm
The poll says that people agreed that that 57% felt BJP-JDS governance was better than Congress-JDS governance and also that 53 % consider that JDS has betrayed BJP. If this is true one cannot understand how 42% prefer Congress against 29% for BJP.
This poll too fails to convince the public that the methodology adopted was reliable.
We all know that questionnaires can be clevery drafted and information mischievously collated to elicit misleading conclusions.
Unless the polling agency is completely trasparent about the selection of sample and the actual wordings used in the questionnaire, the poll result will be suspected.
It is not possible to accept that Bangalore voters are naive enough to forget the betrayal of BJP and it will have its impact on the public. What may favour of Congress is the constituency wise candidate preference and the muslim vote consolidation. Whether this will be decisive or not is not yet clear given the infighting in Congress and the unknown factor of BSP.
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EC may mandate complete transparency of the survey and its conversion to the seat predictions if they have to be published.
8 May 2008 at 5:25 am
I too as a statistician am not able to understand the results.But as a common man I am sure of one thing. Nothing is going to imrove, whatever may be the result. Ramachander
8 May 2008 at 5:45 am
Hope Churumuri will keep an account of all these polls and publish an article how they performed. That way at least we can hold them responsible to some extent.
8 May 2008 at 8:01 am
Every political party has their own poll agency, it seems.
Year after year their predictions have been falling flat on their face.
The recent case being the UP election results.
But, the poll prediction business and professions have been thriving well.
This was the reason why editor of one of the leading English national magazines decided to stop publishing any more poll predictions.
Why stop them at all? After all the poll bandwagons need something munch on and debate till the elections are over as the election commission has put the brake on all other types pre-poll entertainments.
8 May 2008 at 9:09 am
The best thing is the polls indicate a clear mandate compared to last time.
Any ways what matters are the poll results not thepre poll surveys
9 May 2008 at 5:58 pm
There should be a clear ban on pre poll surveys. None of them can be accurate. and few hundreds or thousands cannot represent lakhs of voters. Many of such surveys have only yes or no. It can not be ideal