Pollsters' poor showing

Time for some hard introspection by media as well

Even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Amit Shah do some hard introspection on the party's debacle in the Bihar Assembly elections, another set of actors in the polling business urgently need to do the same: pollsters and media pundits. This was evident in the just-concluded Bihar elections, when exit poll projections and the pundits' analyses based on early numbers proved so laughably wayward as to make a dent on their credibility. As the exit poll numbers started rolling in late last week, the results looked too close to call. Four pollsters gave the alliance of the Rashtriya Janata Dal, the Janata Dal (United) and the Congress - the Grand Alliance - a slight edge. Only Today's Chanakya, which had acquired a reputation for prescience after its standout prediction of a BJP sweep for the 2014 Lok Sabha election, took the contrarian position of projecting a comfortable majority for the BJP-led coalition. Now, the disturbing fact has emerged that the sole spot-on poll, by Axis Ad-Print Media, had predicted a 169-183-seat landslide for the Grand Alliance, but the television channel that had commissioned it chose not to broadcast it.

The confusion was compounded soon after counting began on Sunday. By 8.30 am, early leads - not firm results - suggested that the BJP coalition was significantly ahead. Experienced psephologists and veteran analysts used this to predict that the BJP coalition was headed for a comfortable majority. Explanations for the BJP coalition's success and Nitish Kumar's stumbles were provided as a consequence of this prediction. Viewers surfing the channels - as they inevitably do nowadays - would have been bombarded by contrary analyses put out by respected veterans of the polling scene. Few seemed able to resist temptation and insist instead that early leads should not be construed as final results. An hour later, when the Grand Alliance overtook its opponents and it stayed that way, the scale of the landslide became evident. Now, viewers were confused doubly as analysis shifted seamlessly to the question of how Nitish Kumar's strategy had paid off. These serial reversals, for which one channel anchor has apologised, would have been amusing were it not for the damage they did to the already dented credibility of the media in general and the electronic media in particular.

Doubts are now widespread about the veracity of supposedly scientific exit polls. It is incumbent on the media to dispel any suspicion that they are prey to the political inclinations and subjectivity of the channels and their owners. Psephology, after all, is an inexact science and vulnerable to assumptions and weights. Even so, given that such surveys can cost as much as Rs 1 crore, pollsters should explain to consumers why and how they went wrong. So far, only Today's Chanakya, which got things embarrassingly wrong, chose to explain the problem as a computer error. If there is a lesson for the frenetic anxieties of India's hyper-competitive 24x7 media, it is that veracity can never be substituted by instant gratification. Or put another way, it is more important to be right rather than be first.