At the end of each election season, there is always a closing parade of political experts and journalists blowing their trumpets and waving their “told you so” flags. Then there are those who have to eat crow. Some have the privilege to do so in private and some others, like the well respected pollster, end up weeping on national television.
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Let’s set the trumpets and tears aside for the moment to probe the very basic question — why do voters mislead? It is preposterous to assume that the voters owe the truth to pollsters or journalists. But more often than not, especially in the rural parts of the country, the voters open their hearts out, wearing their political preferences on their sleeves. And we need to be grateful for that. Many of us, wading into the treacherous waters of election predictions, have been victims of the “Bradley Effect”.
In 1982, Tom Bradley, an African-American long-time mayor of Los Angeles, ran as the Democratic Party’s candidate for Governor of California against Republican candidate George Deukmejian, a white man of Armenian descent. Most polls in the final days before the election showed Bradley with a significant lead. Stunning the pollsters, Bradley lost the polls. A post-poll investigation found that many white voters who claimed they would vote for Bradley actually voted for Deukmejian. They told the surveyors the answer that they felt would be deemed to be more publicly acceptable and in this case, racially correct.
This election season, we saw our own “Bradley Effect” thanks to the fact that the media stands widely discredited. I have forgotten the number of times I had to field accusations that I was working on the payroll of the ruling party during this election season. The voters often assume the journalist or survey agency’s political positions align with that of the ruling regime.
One group of voters who particularly confounded the surveyors and journalists were the Dalits. Several post-poll analysis have shown that Dalit voters, especially the non-Jatav sections beholden to the Bharatiya Janata Party in the last ten years, shifted their loyalties. The BJP’s tally has been reduced to 55 seats (from 77 it won in 2019) out of the total 131 seats reserved for Scheduled Castes.
To lump all Dalit voters together is an oversimplification bordering on disrespect and a crime that we regularly indulge in the name of political analysis. Being at the bottom of the social pyramid, especially more so in villages, where caste hierarchies remain more or less intact, the Dalit voters usually remain reticent about their choices. At Belwara Chauraha, in Gorakhpur, ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, I met Awdesh Paswan, a local contractor. He and his friend had stopped by for a snack at the tea stall. As I prodded & probed Mr. Paswan and others sitting around, trying to steer the conversation toward their political preferences, several held forth on dissecting the pros and cons of the two main candidates in the fray. But Mr. Paswan remained silent. His parting words to me were, “Can’t speak here, madam, at the chowk.” Instead, he chose to give me his phone number, so that he could speak his mind without fear of possible backlash. There are many like Mr. Paswan, who don’t feel comfortable advertising their political picks. And, more often than not, the silent voters like him don’t get counted, which leads to skewed predictions.
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Though not an excuse, neither journalists nor survey agencies can afford to spend more time with voters like Mr. Paswan and be patient enough till they decide to open up.
The reason journalists had a better run than the pollsters in this season is because unlike the pollsters, whose straitjacket response forms run on data, we could spare a thought for intangibles such as silence.
