Delhi exit polls were right only in voter percentage and not seats!

Veeresh Malik 12 February 2015

According to Election Commission data, AAP received 54.3% votes; BJP got 32.2% while 9.7% people voted for Congress in Delhi. This is what the exit polls were predicting, right?

For the next five years, let's imagine that you were a politically inclined Delhiite who fancied the Aam Admi Party (AAP) and your best friends were inclined towards the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). You talked and breathed and drank politics all day long, but at mealtimes, you sat down together, and shared the food based on an equitable relationship, which included the cost.

Now let us assume because of a difference in size, age, eating capacity, food served at office, and all the rest, the AAP person paid for 54% of the food, the BJP person paid for 32% and the Congress person for 10%. The balance 4%, you decided, was to be subsidised by other means, let us say what you grew at home? That made for a complete 100%. Fair enough, and everybody happy, for whatever reason.

However, one day, a very tasty and huge pizza landed up on the doorstep, with an irresistible offer attached - your friends and you would get a pizza delivered at home for the next five years! The pizza was really tasty, it promised to become even tastier as days went bye, and it was huge.

That is when the trouble started. All three of you now wanted a bigger share of the pizza.

So, after a few weeks of fighting over it and calling each other names, nobody got the pizza as you kept fighting over it and then it got broken, fell down, and other people ran away with the scraps. Or the dog ate it. Whatever.

Hungry and unable to sort this out, and without pizza, also since you were all politically inclined, you went to the Election Commission of India (EC) and asked them to decide for you. The Commission in its wisdom, decided to poll the neighbourhood, people, cats, dogs, sparrows, everybody. They used electronic means but they also generated millions of small pieces of paper, which they strung together with twine and needle, then they put on their venerable hats and pulled out the original distribution as decided by all three of you, and presented you with a result that said, ipso facto.

That AAP had polled about 5/9ths of the votes, but would get 96% or almost all the pizza.

That BJP had polled about 1/3rd of the votes, but would get 4% of the pizza.

That Congress had polled about 1/10th of the votes, but would get nothing from the pizza.

You read it here first - reassessment of votes polled shows the results in a new light if you look at them from the way other countries handle their elections, percentile votes polled share, and not by the winner take all method. Now does it look like a sweep or wave or maybe an illusion? Or maybe closer to the opinion and exit polls?

That, in brief, is how the Delhi elections really happened.

http://eciresults.nic.in/PartyWiseResult.htm

Or, put it another way, all the people who travel in the Delhi Metro on one weekday, about 2.8 million people, they get only three representatives. And just 4% of the food.

However, for the people who travel by Delhi Metro on a weekday plus those who travel on Sunday, that is about 4.8 million people, they get 67 representatives. And 96% of the food.

And those who travel by bus, between 0.7 and 1.5 million people per day, no representatives. No pizza either.

Yes yes, I know, we shall do this for the National Elections of 2014 also, but nothing ever prepared anybody for such a skewed result as the one achieved in the recent Delhi elections.

Luckily, too much pizza is bad for health, too.

(Veeresh Malik started and sold a couple of companies, is now back to his first love—writing. He is also involved in helping small and midsize family-run businesses re-invent themselves.)

Comments

User

Suketu Shah

1 decade ago

It was a well hatched plot by congress.

Congress pulled a fast one on Amit Shah and by the time he realised it was too late.It wl not happen again.You cannot fool Amit Shah 2 times.Wait and watch-Bihar,Bengal and UP.

pravsemilo

1 decade ago

Why blame AAP for this? I did a similar analysis for national elections in 2014. The results page has been removed from ECI website but here is a Wikipedia link.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_Indian_general_election,_2014

In fact this is not just true for these two cases, but for every election ever since coalition governments are formed. Consider that a given % of voters vote for Party B just because they don't want Party A to come to power. But after results they see both of them joining hands. The leading party in a coalition might not have the majority share, but it does get a lion's share when it gets to running the government even though majority of population doesn't want it to be in power.

Yes things are different in other countries. In India we have too many political parties and with different flavors. In India anyone can form a political party, coalition governments are the norm, The fact is that the powers that be decided to have lenient rules for voting, party formation, government formation for some good reason. But they are being misused and there isn't any intent to correct the direction.

pravsemilo

Replied to pravsemilo comment 1 decade ago

Let me give one more example where our election rules don't justify. I might want a certain party to come in power at center - mainly due to the image of Prime Ministerial candidate, but the representative from my constituency isn't well suited to represent me in LokSabha (criminal background, local corruption cases etc). What do I do? NOTA?