The_Showstopper
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Please explain... How?
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heisenberg
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Bihar results: why did the exit polls get it wrong? - Livemint
Bihar results: why did the exit polls get it wrong?
Poor estimates of Grand Alliance’s effectiveness and NDA’s inconsistent performance among the major factors
Karthik Shashidhar
Nitish Kumar (left) and Lalu Prasad after the Bihar election results on Sunday. With independents and others turning out to be much more significant in these elections, it would have taken either special skills or extraordinary luck to call this election correctly. Photo: Reuters
It’s now a well established fact that opinion and exit polling agencies had a horrid time in the recently concluded Bihar assembly elections.
Not only did the published polls fail to predict the magnitude of victory by chief minister Nitish Kumar’s Grand Alliance in terms of seat share, but none of the pollsters got the vote share right either.
While Today’s Chanakya predicted that the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance (BJP-led NDA) would get 46% of the votes and the Grand Alliance 39%, most of the other pollsters had given both alliances about 40% of the votes each.
The notable exception was Axis, which correctly predicted that the Grand Alliance would win by a landslide, but their poll was curiously withdrawn by the television news channel CNN-IBN, which had commissioned it. But Axis, too, could not get the vote shares right, overshooting its estimates for both alliances by a few percentage points.
We will start the analysis by looking at the overall vote share won by each party in the recent assembly elections and comparing them with the overall vote share in last year’s general elections in Bihar. Given the change in the proportion of seats contested by each party in each election, this comparison isn’t fully correct, but is a good starting point.
Figure 1 shows a scatter plot of the vote share of each party in the 2014 and 2015 elections, with the red line representing equal vote shares in both elections.
Click here for enlarge
Parties to the right of the red line did worse in the recently concluded elections than in last year’s general elections, with the distance from the line indicating the difference in performance between the two elections.
The first takeaway from this graph is that both the BJP and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) did much worse in the assembly elections than in last year’s Lok Sabha elections, though we should keep in mind the differences in seat contested.
Kumar’s Janata Dal (United), or JD(U), on the other hand, actually improved its vote share from last year, as did independents.
While this measure is flawed (as mentioned earlier), it summarizes the story of the elections well, and explains why the Grand Alliance got such a massive majority. For not only did the vote share of the NDA decrease compared with last year’s general elections (overall vote shares of all NDA parties fell), but its three major opponents came together to form the Grand Alliance.
The 38% vote share obtained by the NDA (putting together the BJP, Lok Janshakti Party, or LJP, and Rashtriya Lok Samta Party, or RLSP) in 2014 was enough for it to win three-fourths of the seats in a clear three-cornered contest.
But with the opposition coming together in the Grand Alliance, a combined 34% would never be enough to come even close to majority.
In order to make better sense of vote shares (given the difference in the number of seats contested), we will next look at the “contested vote share”, which ignores seats not contested by a party. In order to calculate this, we divide the total number of votes won by a party by the total number of votes cast in all constituencies the party contested in. Figure 2 compares the contested vote share from the 2014 general elections with the contested vote share in the assembly elections.
The first thing to note is that the BJP’s performance dropped only marginally compared with the 2014 general elections. Despite significant campaigning by the BJP leadership, there was little impact from it. The BJP’s alliance partners dropped their vote share precipitously, with the LJP and the RLSP both going down significantly in contested vote share.
While the BJP’s performance might have helped it maintain its share of seats, the coming together of the Grand Alliance thwarted such plans. The JD(U) had put in a pathetic performance in 2014, with a paltry 17% contested vote share.
With the coming together of the alliance, this increased to over 40% in this year’s assembly elections. The RJD also put in a spectacular performance, increasing its contested vote share from 30% to 44%.
When the JD(U) and the RJD came together, commentators were concerned that votes would not transfer easily from one partner to the other, given the history of rivalry between the two parties.
Based on the above data, it appears that any such leakage would have only been marginal.
Coming back to pollsters, there are many reasons why they might have got it wrong.
Firstly, it appears that they did not estimate the effectiveness of the Grand Alliance in a proper manner. The right way to have measured alliance effectiveness would have been to ask voters who they voted for in the last assembly elections in addition to who they were voting for in the current elections.
This would have allowed pollsters to calculate leakage of votes away from the Grand Alliance, if any. Given available data, it is not clear if the pollsters asked such questions (sadly, the lack of disclosure norms mean that questionnaires are not available).
Click here for enlarge
Secondly, while the BJP managed to hold on to its vote share, pollsters seem to have underestimated the drop in the vote share of its allies. It is common to assume in opinion or exit polls that all partners of an alliance perform similarly. This assumption came unstuck in these elections, with BJP votes not “transferring” properly to its allies.
Finally, there was the issue of independent candidates, whose overall vote share shot up by over five percentage points. Independent candidates are hard to model in opinion or exit polls since independent candidates are independent of each other, and numbers from one constituency cannot be extrapolated to find out the numbers in an adjacent constituency. Some independents are party rebels, which requires special modelling (this part cannot be automated).
Given the difficulty in modelling, pollsters have a tendency to ignore, and sometimes underestimate, the effect of independents. With the vote share of independents shooting up in these elections, this tendency proved to be costly.
Overall, this was an unusual election and a hard one to call. Election Metrics has repeatedly pointed out that the lack of “prior models” (in the wake of redrawn alliances) would make polling hard.
The inconsistent performance of the NDA (with the BJP holding vote share but allies dropping) made things harder still for pollsters, as they overestimated the NDA’s vote share. With independents and “others” turning out to be much more significant in these elections compared with other elections, it would have taken either special skills or extraordinary luck to call this election correctly.
Tailpiece: Election Metrics had always maintained that this election was unlikely to be close and the odds of it being close had been grossly overestimated. We turned out to be right, though the data based on which we made the call turned out to be flawed—given that the Grand Alliance had a remarkable lead over the NDA in terms of vote share itself.
Karthik Shashidhar
Bihar results: why did the exit polls get it wrong?
Poor estimates of Grand Alliance’s effectiveness and NDA’s inconsistent performance among the major factors
Karthik Shashidhar
Nitish Kumar (left) and Lalu Prasad after the Bihar election results on Sunday. With independents and others turning out to be much more significant in these elections, it would have taken either special skills or extraordinary luck to call this election correctly. Photo: Reuters
It’s now a well established fact that opinion and exit polling agencies had a horrid time in the recently concluded Bihar assembly elections.
Not only did the published polls fail to predict the magnitude of victory by chief minister Nitish Kumar’s Grand Alliance in terms of seat share, but none of the pollsters got the vote share right either.
While Today’s Chanakya predicted that the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance (BJP-led NDA) would get 46% of the votes and the Grand Alliance 39%, most of the other pollsters had given both alliances about 40% of the votes each.
The notable exception was Axis, which correctly predicted that the Grand Alliance would win by a landslide, but their poll was curiously withdrawn by the television news channel CNN-IBN, which had commissioned it. But Axis, too, could not get the vote shares right, overshooting its estimates for both alliances by a few percentage points.
We will start the analysis by looking at the overall vote share won by each party in the recent assembly elections and comparing them with the overall vote share in last year’s general elections in Bihar. Given the change in the proportion of seats contested by each party in each election, this comparison isn’t fully correct, but is a good starting point.
Figure 1 shows a scatter plot of the vote share of each party in the 2014 and 2015 elections, with the red line representing equal vote shares in both elections.
Click here for enlarge
Parties to the right of the red line did worse in the recently concluded elections than in last year’s general elections, with the distance from the line indicating the difference in performance between the two elections.
The first takeaway from this graph is that both the BJP and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) did much worse in the assembly elections than in last year’s Lok Sabha elections, though we should keep in mind the differences in seat contested.
Kumar’s Janata Dal (United), or JD(U), on the other hand, actually improved its vote share from last year, as did independents.
While this measure is flawed (as mentioned earlier), it summarizes the story of the elections well, and explains why the Grand Alliance got such a massive majority. For not only did the vote share of the NDA decrease compared with last year’s general elections (overall vote shares of all NDA parties fell), but its three major opponents came together to form the Grand Alliance.
The 38% vote share obtained by the NDA (putting together the BJP, Lok Janshakti Party, or LJP, and Rashtriya Lok Samta Party, or RLSP) in 2014 was enough for it to win three-fourths of the seats in a clear three-cornered contest.
But with the opposition coming together in the Grand Alliance, a combined 34% would never be enough to come even close to majority.
In order to make better sense of vote shares (given the difference in the number of seats contested), we will next look at the “contested vote share”, which ignores seats not contested by a party. In order to calculate this, we divide the total number of votes won by a party by the total number of votes cast in all constituencies the party contested in. Figure 2 compares the contested vote share from the 2014 general elections with the contested vote share in the assembly elections.
The first thing to note is that the BJP’s performance dropped only marginally compared with the 2014 general elections. Despite significant campaigning by the BJP leadership, there was little impact from it. The BJP’s alliance partners dropped their vote share precipitously, with the LJP and the RLSP both going down significantly in contested vote share.
While the BJP’s performance might have helped it maintain its share of seats, the coming together of the Grand Alliance thwarted such plans. The JD(U) had put in a pathetic performance in 2014, with a paltry 17% contested vote share.
With the coming together of the alliance, this increased to over 40% in this year’s assembly elections. The RJD also put in a spectacular performance, increasing its contested vote share from 30% to 44%.
When the JD(U) and the RJD came together, commentators were concerned that votes would not transfer easily from one partner to the other, given the history of rivalry between the two parties.
Based on the above data, it appears that any such leakage would have only been marginal.
Coming back to pollsters, there are many reasons why they might have got it wrong.
Firstly, it appears that they did not estimate the effectiveness of the Grand Alliance in a proper manner. The right way to have measured alliance effectiveness would have been to ask voters who they voted for in the last assembly elections in addition to who they were voting for in the current elections.
This would have allowed pollsters to calculate leakage of votes away from the Grand Alliance, if any. Given available data, it is not clear if the pollsters asked such questions (sadly, the lack of disclosure norms mean that questionnaires are not available).
Click here for enlarge
Secondly, while the BJP managed to hold on to its vote share, pollsters seem to have underestimated the drop in the vote share of its allies. It is common to assume in opinion or exit polls that all partners of an alliance perform similarly. This assumption came unstuck in these elections, with BJP votes not “transferring” properly to its allies.
Finally, there was the issue of independent candidates, whose overall vote share shot up by over five percentage points. Independent candidates are hard to model in opinion or exit polls since independent candidates are independent of each other, and numbers from one constituency cannot be extrapolated to find out the numbers in an adjacent constituency. Some independents are party rebels, which requires special modelling (this part cannot be automated).
Given the difficulty in modelling, pollsters have a tendency to ignore, and sometimes underestimate, the effect of independents. With the vote share of independents shooting up in these elections, this tendency proved to be costly.
Overall, this was an unusual election and a hard one to call. Election Metrics has repeatedly pointed out that the lack of “prior models” (in the wake of redrawn alliances) would make polling hard.
The inconsistent performance of the NDA (with the BJP holding vote share but allies dropping) made things harder still for pollsters, as they overestimated the NDA’s vote share. With independents and “others” turning out to be much more significant in these elections compared with other elections, it would have taken either special skills or extraordinary luck to call this election correctly.
Tailpiece: Election Metrics had always maintained that this election was unlikely to be close and the odds of it being close had been grossly overestimated. We turned out to be right, though the data based on which we made the call turned out to be flawed—given that the Grand Alliance had a remarkable lead over the NDA in terms of vote share itself.
Karthik Shashidhar
The_Showstopper
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Let me remind you that there was also anti-incumbency factor for JDU, though RJD got a bit more seats than JDU but almost all people of Bihar even RJD supporters wanted Nitish to be their CM, And it is the same Bihar which gave 31 seats to BJP+ in 2014. What do you think made them give 3/4 seats to BJP+ then?
ShrestaBharath
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True. For Biharis, "caste, and 500rs money".. it was the feedback from my friend who went for election duty (security force) who roamed round the inner parts of Bihar and near to Nepal.
Star Wars
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RJD got 80+ seats added to that RJD also got 15 seats which was being given on congress tickets. This was a vote for RJD and not Nitish
The_Showstopper
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Since you want to inhibit muslims of their culinary habits, hence I brought in the comparison of inhibiting Hindu culinary habits. If you intend to draw cartoons to profess secularism or to offend someone, then I hope you won't cry a river over MF Hussain or some other lucky guy painting your Goddesses nude...
ranjeet
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Weren't you the one who started a thread about when Rajasthan government wanted colleges to organize a blood donation camp on Eid? But secular brigade sacrificed two bhakts to celebrate Tipu's birthday in Karnataka today organized by Congress government that too on Diwali just to Mock Hindus and Christians you were no where to be found. I am sure this news went down your throat well with the beef curry.
The_Showstopper
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If you remember, there was seat sharing in place and people who wanted to vote JDU voted for RJD as it was their alliance partner but as I said earlier, its the same people who gave 3/4 of the seats to BJP+, you did not complain then, why now?
Star Wars
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RJD got far far more votes than JDU, its time people accepted this was a vote for Lalu and not Nitish, the fact 15 RJD candidates winning on congress ticket just confirms it.
The_Showstopper
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Were the holidays cancelled? Were Government employees forced to come down to work to mark the day?
skyisthelimit
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Maybe you are an exception towards pork eating.
To have a reality check, try saying this with your Muslim friends and relatives. Ask them, what happens if someone sells or eats pork in Muslim community ghetto.
Ask yourself... Why satanic versus was banned? What shah mano case became so famous? Why triple talaq is still unchanged in spite of knowing how it has affected scores of muslim women and families? Why our politicians do not talk of change or.modernization of madrasa educations? Why non bjp govts are giving money to priest in every mosque, why they are not legally challenged or stopped when they start construction of mosque at any odd place?
Did you see how many people attend funeral procession for the mumbai gangster hanged a few months back? A JK militant killed 2 weeks back? Did you even hear any Indian political party saying against it? Or condemning it?
Pls ask yourself why and you will know how secular we are.
Today we have a situation where if one Indian be it hindu or jain or christians who even tries to raise an objection against any of above questions... He is labelled as intolerant...fanatic, facist, etc etc.
My point is y is secularism one sided? When others ask questions we are not secular...but when muslims ask something we should be secular.
This seed of secularism is twisted and outgrown like jungli weeds now..it has spread in country system due courtesy CONgress. Who never cared for hindus or muslims but just used us as pawns for political gains.
The_Showstopper
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You are yet to answer me... Why did the same Biharis gave 31 seats to BJP+ then?
Star Wars
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Have already answered this a million times here...3/4 seats were given to BJP because the votes were divided among Nitish, Lalu and Congress during 2014. BJP Vote shares have not decreased
Declaring Tipu day during Diwali is not a problem ? The same person who was Aurengazeb of South India ? Or is he your hero because hindus were brutalized ?
ranjeet
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Yes government employees are given an options to take a day off when CM of the state is on official visit.
The_Showstopper
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Was the beef being sold in Hindu community ghetto?
Why were Wendy Doniger books pulped? Why was MF Hussain banished from his own country? Why were Babri masjid gates opened for Puja even after the Supreme Court's order against doing so. The fact is that there has been appeasement of religious extremists of all religions in our country which needs to be stopped.
Why do I get to hear praises of patriotism for a criminal called Chota Rajan?
We aren't secular mate, we just appease extremists of all religions in here...
I am asking about this particular situation?
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