Bihar Polls: NDA close to 2/3rd majority, says new survey | Latest News & Updates at Daily News & Analysis
Interesting part of this survey is ..
Overall, 35.9 percent Muslim respondents are rooting for NDA, while the 'Grand Alliance' will garner majority 57.9 percent.
That was a Zee News survey -_- & Zee news is Pro-BJP
. Also their sample size is suppsoed to be 7 lakh!!
Also let me quote what someone told me just sometime back on sample size:-
"See, If the sample composition taken is wrong, bigger the sample, bigger will be the error at the final calculation
ALso getting right sample composition when size is about 7 lakh is practically impossible for a state like Bihar.
It seems like a combination of bias+wrong sample composition could indicate that the Zee news survey is nonsense"
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Overall, 35.9 percent Muslim respondents are rooting for NDA, while the 'Grand Alliance' will garner majority 57.9 percent. The 'Grand Alliance' also enjoys edge with Yadav community, with 50.2 percent of vote share, compared to NDA's 43.7 percent.
LOL The above 2 statistics are enough to show that this survey is nonsense.
43% Yadavs
, 35% for Muslims
LOL!! Both Muslims & Yadavs will vote for MGB in large numbers(as of now). See Lalu's casteist rhetoric+how many seats he has allotted to both Muslims & Yadavs! Add to that the Reservation controversy from Mohan Bhagwat.
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An article from Praveen Patil of Swarajyamag
Pataliputra Prologue: Winds Of Change In Bihar?
The Election Commission in Bihar has recently released a detailed analysis of the state’s turnout patterns which give us great insights into the way voters actually behave on polling day
. A primary reason why Bihar’s politics changed in the new millennium was the way election commission managed to weed out corrupt practices at all levels of electioneering – starting from cleansing the electoral rolls to preventing booth capturing and voter intimidation on polling day.
Data released by the commission shows that final electoral rolls published on 31st July this year has a total electorate of 6,68,26,658 which is well aligned with the Census projections for 2015 of 6 crore 20 lakh odd population of the state being of over 18 years of age.
This truly remarkable achievement of universal adult franchise has ensured that most duplicate voters in the system have been cleansed even while every individual finds his/her name in the electoral roll. This is unlike the 90’s era when powerful political forces filled rolls of particular geographies with only their supporters and managed to win elections by unfair means. Thus, suddenly, most of the Lalu Prasad Yadav ecosystem has stared at defeat over the last two decades.
Data Source: SVEEP [Systematic Voters Education & Electoral Practice Plan], Election Commission, Bihar
Once actual adult franchise has been stabilised in Bihar, the next problem is that of ensuring voter participation. As the KABBP [Knowledge, Attitude, Behavior, Belief and Practice] baseline survey done by the Bihar Election Commission clearly shows,
the biggest reason for not voting in an election is migration.
Most Bihari migrants usually return back to their native places during the Dussehra-Diwali-Chhat Puja season which is why clubbing together of elections with the festival season has been one of the biggest ‘X’ factors of NDA’s rise in Bihar since the second re-election in October 2005 (after a hung assembly in March that year).
A large majority of these migrant Biharis who have seen better governance models outside their own state tend to blame the 15 year long “Jungle-Raj” of Lalu Yadav era for most of the woes of Bihar. This year, even more crucially, the 5 phase Bihar elections are scheduled during Navaratri festivities only to end a few days before Diwali.
A large number of migrant Bihari voters are expected to be back in the state for the election season and are also expected to exert their own swing on the polls.
Bihari migrant population can be geographically divided into three parts:
First, the nearby migrants who have made neighboring states like UP and Delhi their economic base. A large segment of this is made up of Yadav-OBC populace but are not particularly leaning towards RJD mainly due to economic reasons. In the last two assembly elections, this segment voted for Nitish Kumar, but this time it may move away from the secular alliance. In fact, SP is making a big effort to woo this OBC migrant segment and has deployed nearly hundred SP youth leaders for this task, while BJP is extensively using Bhojpuri superstars like Manoj Tiwari.
Second, the Maharashtra-Gujarat migrants of Bihar who are more evenly represented socially with a slightly higher representation by MBCs and Dalits form the second segment. Here, BJP is enjoying a clear upper hand because of sound strategic planning. For instance, Surat MP, C.R. Patil, is a surprise choice of the BJP to take charge of the Bhagalpur-Munger-Nawada division which has a significantly large migrant populace in Gujarat.
In the run-up to the election, t
here have been some very interesting moves by the BJP to not only systematically bring back migrant population back for voting but also for influencing local voters by flooding the market with NaMo sarees and dress material from Surat’s textile mills.
Third, migrants to other states – here too, neither RJD-JDU-Congress nor any of the third front parties have any infrastructure in place while BJP is systematically targeting migrant Bihari voters across India by using local BJP-RSS cadre.
If that is the state of the “non-vote”, the actual voting reasons are even more interesting. As the SVEEP survey shows, the top three reasons (apart from proclaiming it as their “duty”) for voters to turnout at polling booths are essentially related to proper election management. These are extremely important findings by SVEEP survey and their importance is only increased by the fact that this is “official” data released by the Election Commission itself.
Consider this – 35% of voters go out to vote because they receive “voter slips” and additionally 21% of the voters also state their sympathies for a particular political party.
Essentially what this data tells us is that 1 out of every 3 voters may be influenced by how well the political campaign is managed on the ground. This is where again the
Mahagathbandhan of RJD-JDU-Congress is found wanting.
JDU started its door-to-door campaign much earlier with the Bihar@2025and Har Ghar Dastak campaigns but both of them faltered midway, partly because of lack of foot soldiers and partly because of strong resistance from government machinery as well as Nitish support base which was disappointed at the tie-up with Lalu Yadav. Now, after hundreds of trucks fitted with giant LED screens standing idle without much work, JDU has hired some 7,000 odd bicycles for campaigning which is also not taking off properly.
JDU’s campaign is fundamentally flawed in trying to copy the 2014 Modi campaign model (with Prashant Kishor’s design) without actually possessing required infrastructure comprising a committed cadre base.
If that is the state of JDU,
RJD has mostly limited itself to Yadav-Muslim outreach and is not even pretending to woo other communities. The third constituent of the secular alliance, the once powerful national party, Congress, is a directionless organisation today under Rahul Gandhi’s stewardship.
For a party that was supposed to counterbalance the backward push of its regional alliance partners by bringing in upper-caste votes, Congress’s strategy is baffling to say the least. Just why did the Congress appoint Mallikarjun Kharge (a Dalit leader from Karnataka) as the party in charge of Bihar polls is a question that no Congressman finds an answer to.
Here is a leader who is not known to possess any strategic strength or electoral experience beyond Hyderabad-Karnataka and is expected to manage the high-octane Bihar battle.
Many Congress leaders are willing to bet (off the record of course) that the Congress party wouldn’t cross even 7 seats in Bihar because of some baffling ticket decisions by Kharge who has near zero understanding of state politics.
Data Source: SVEEP [Systematic Voters Education & Electoral Practice Plan], Election Commission, Bihar
In complete contrast is the BJP campaign in Bihar which is precise, creative and of breathtaking scale. The Bihar campaign of BJP is almost a textbook case of ‘how to run an election campaign’ – possibly even better than the 2014 Uttar Pradesh experience. A whopping 6 lakh BJP-RSS karyakartas have been deployed across Bihar and are constantly monitored using mobile apps and GPS locations for continuous updates.
A large section of these 6 lakh workers have been strategically deployed in swing polling booths of crucial assembly constituencies without expending resources on Muslim dominated geographies. What is more, after the recent membership drive,
BJP has a total of 80 lakh individuals as BJP members in the state and apparently more than 60 lakh of those are verified voters.
BJP is reaching out to these 6 million virtual members with a clear message of canvassing for a saffron victory – even if 40 lakh of those registered members bring in 1 additional vote, it would mean a whopping 8 million votes for the NDA.
This strategic finesse of BJP has been visible throughout the campaign period from late August. Initially, Prime Minister Modi (undoubtedly, the most popular leader across India by a wide margin) bombarded the state with a high voltage campaign that included the announcement of 1.25 lakh rupees special package for Bihar along with repeated mocking on the return of “Jungle Raj” rhetoric.
This built the crucial enabling environment in favor of BJP – targeting those 21% of voters who develop sympathies for a particular political party as per the EC survey. Next, BJP-NDA managed the ticket distribution with least possible resistance from within. Now, the most effective ground campaign of providing “voter slips” to the door steps is being carried out by those 6 lakh plus BJP cadre – targeting 35% of voters as per EC survey.
As the SVEEP survey shows, high turnout in any given geography is mostly due to “wave” in favor of a party or a good candidate (nearly 75% respondents believed so) which is why this BJP campaign is systematically and technologically recreating the Varanasi experience of 2009.
This is where again the secular alliance is probably faltering.
The Nitish-Lalu campaign is simply failing to talk about “development politics” and is overtly concentrating on “caste” factor. Lalu Prasad Yadav, for instance, always talks about “Mandal 2.0” which has very few takers on the ground beyond his caste brethren, while Nitish Kumar seems to be obsessed with “reservations” issue trying to milk Mohan Bhagwat’s comments.
Once again, data from the Election Commission survey shows that for today’s voter, political party or a candidate’s competence is more important than any other factor. In fact, only 2% of voters admit to voting purely on the basis of caste – this phenomenon of post caste electorate is something that we have been constantly discussing for more than 2 years now at Swarajya-CRI and 5Forty3.
Primary Data Source: Election Commission of India
Yet, it is not as if caste is absent altogether from Bihar’s political landscape. It is just that caste is now not the only deciding factor and is effective when coupled with other features like development politics and economic agendas along with clear tangible benefits for voters.
For instance,
Nitish Kumar was successful for the whole of last decade not just because he created and micro-managed social groups like Mahadalits and MBCs (Most Backward Castes) but also because he provided better roads, better governance models and economic prosperity for nearly 8 years out of his 10 year period. T
oday, the same Nitish Kumar talks far less about development and concentrates on caste arithmetic despite having lost 2014 LS polls on a similar campaign.
The last 3 decades have seen tremendous changes in Bihar’s political landscape which is symbolised by the chart above on the changing social nature of the state assembly. While Upper Castes had dominated Bihar Assembly in the 1980’s, OBCs found a new voice through Mandal in the 90’s.
Yet, as we can see clearly, the actual transfer of power only happened from Upper Castes to dominant OBC groups like Yadavs, Kushwahas and Kurmis whereas the really poor MBCs were still struggling to discover political space in the Lalu era.
Since the last decade or so, there has been a more balanced Bihari assembly between Upper Castes and OBCs while even MBCs have begun to assert themselves. This change over the last decade has been possible because of two factors:
- The rise of a post-caste governance vote
- Free and fair elections by EC which has considerably lessened the fear of marginalised poor sections
It is in this backdrop that Bihar will go to polls this festive season.
The Mahagathbandhan’s ticket distribution in such an environment is overtly middle-heavy – with highest representation to OBCs (primarily Yadavs) and mostly with weaker extremes (scant representation to MBCs, Dalits and Upper Castes). For instance,
although RJD-JDU-Congress have given 55% (134 out of 243) of the tickets to backward castes, a deeper analysis shows that 75% of these tickets have gone to dominant OBCs like Yadavs, Kurmis and Kushwahas whereas less than 15% seats have gone to MBCs who account for 35% of the state’s population.
This lopsided Yadav dominance is best illustrated in those 15 assembly seats of the so called ‘Yadav belt’ that have been allotted to JDU and Congress.
Here, in these 15 seats, NDA’s candidate list is widely representative symbolising the post-caste electorate of India while JDU-Congress seem to have simply put blind faith on Lalu’s ability to consolidate Yadav vote bank. The trends of these 15 battleground seats on polling day will give us an inkling of the direction of wind that is blowing across Bihar.
There is definitely a wind blowing across Bihar. At the outset, it feels like a wind of change.
One cannot yet gauge the full extent of the strength or the clearest directional path that this wind might take, for that will be analysed in the next and concluding part of this treatise when we will have full data of our second pre-poll survey in Bihar.
Pataliputra Prologue: Winds Of Change In Bihar? | Swarajya
I disagree with one thing on this article i.e. the EC held survey! Caste matters a lot in Bihar!! The no. of people voting on caste lines has been truly under-represented!!
