Ep. 15: Exit Polls and Surveys : Accuracy and Transparency (with Sanjay Kumar)

Ganatantra

In a couple of days, discussions about the 2019 General elections will hinge on the release of exit poll numbers put up by various survey and media agencies. We explore what it takes to go from a good track record in calculating vote shares to problems in predicting how many seats a party will win. Why do opinion and exit polls struggle in India? Is it just a matter of resources, the complexity of the first-past-the-post-system in a diverse country, or the difficulty in integrating social theory into polling questions? How do you tell if an opinion or exit poll is credible? And perhaps most importantly, why does it matter?

To discuss this and more, we are joined by one of India's leading pollsters, Sanjay Kumar of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies to help us make sense of the numbers and what lies behind them.

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