Gautam Ganguly
(gautamganguly2012@gmail.com)
Demolishing predictions of most of the vaunted psephologists in India, the USA, and elsewhere around the world of an unprecedented neck-to-neck contest in the presidential election of 2024, Donald Trump’s overwhelming victory has caused immense embarrassment to the celebrated pollsters. A casual glance at the chronology of events reveals that the lackluster election scenario got suddenly vibrant consequent upon octogenarian Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the US presidential election race in support of Kamala Harris, heralding new vistas of speculative analysis for the election experts and pollsters predicting a stiff contest.
One such pre-election analysis in October 2024 had projected that Harris stood on a better pedestal than Trump on issues that include abortion, gun policy, climate change, education, healthcare, and protecting US democracy.
The issue of “abortion” became prominent in the 2024 elections since thirteen American states were enforcing bans at all stages of pregnancy, minor exceptions notwithstanding, and it was a million-dollar issue for the voters whether their state constitutions should guarantee a right to abortion. Vice President Kamala Harris called them, “Trump abortion bans’.
However, much to the chagrin of the pollsters, voters rejected the abortion right in Florida and seven of thirteen states. Similarly, Trump’s victory is a major setback for climate action, BBC opined, since Trump is widely described as a climate skeptic’, who has called efforts to boost green energy a “scam.”
Prominent American historian and political scientist Allan Lichtman, who holds an accurate record in forecasting US presidential elections, had predicted that the country will get its first woman president with Kamala Harris set to outweigh Donald Trump in next month’s polls.
Lichtman, a distinguished professor at American University, has developed a prediction system known as the ‘Keys to the White House,’ which has correctly determined outcomes of all US presidential elections since 1984. This time, however, Litchman has to bite the dust.
Closer to home, we saw most of our pollsters predicting a staggering victory of the ruling disposition in the parliamentary election, 2024. Mainstream media, both print and electronic, unanimously and vociferously prophesied sweeping victory, completely hoodwinking ten-year-old anti-incumbency syndrome. One anchor of a high-voltage electronic media even commented that the parliamentary election of 2024 was a mere formality as the writing was clearly visible on the wall!! Final results, however, reveal that the psephologists went wrong in their permutation and combination.
Intriguingly, our psephologists had met with greater debacle in their forecasts in the Ayodya region of Uttar Pradesh in the last parliamentary election. Catastrophically, the result of the Faizabad constituency, in which Ayodhya falls, was an embarrassment, despite the much-hyped temple of Bhagwan Ram being constructed here. It needs no reiteration that the Ayodhya region was key to the Hindutva plan, especially in Uttar Pradesh. Shockingly, effacing all forecasts of election experts, the BJP could just win 33 of 80 seats in 2024 as against 62 seats in 2019. Further, five of nine constituencies in the Ayodhya region were lost by the ruling disposition.
In fact, with the exception of Assam, results of Punjab, Haryana, Maharashtra, Karnataka, etc. were a nightmare for the psephologists!!
More setbacks were awaiting the election experts in the Haryana state election held after the parliamentary election in 2024. Although the majority of exit polls predicted a landslide victory for the Indian National Congress-led alliance, the Bharatiya Janata Party won a majority with 48 seats!! The result of Haryana was more shocking for the pollsters than the Lok Sabha election, 2024.
Recapitulating the glorious track record of our psephologists, it was media baron Prannay Roy who pioneered election analysis and was successful in his predictions in the general election of 1984. Roy is credited for championing opinion polling in India between 1980 and 1995. Prannay and Vinod Dua had formed an extremely incisive team, presenting their methodical election analysis in a gripping style.
For the Indian psephologists, it was a sort of ‘baptism by fire’ in the initial days of election prediction. In the general election of 2004, most election experts and analysts were unanimous in asserting that the ruling dispensation, NDA (National Democratic Alliance), would be back in power effortlessly. But the result was a shocker. The NDA lost the elections.
Unprecedented unanimity of views was seen at exit poll analysis and views of political commentators to predict the emergence of a new political regime during the general election of the country in 2014. Forecasts were also there about near decimation of most opposition parties. The salient feature of all exit polls was echoing the same viewpoint about the victory of the BJP in the 2014 parliamentary election.
However, due credit must be given to the political experts for successfully predicting victory by ‘AAP’ in Delhi (subsequently Punjab too).
Election predictions had successfully analyzed the thumping mandate for BJP in 2016, annihilating the ruling Congress in the state assembly election of Assam. The result of the 2021 state election of Assam had vindicated the election prediction loudly and clearly.
With Maharashtra and Jharkhand state elections at handshaking distance, a challenging task is ahead for the election experts to prove their credibility in the backdrop of recent wrong forecasts in parliamentary and Haryana elections. Whether the predictions of experts will prove right lies buried in an unforeseen future.