The economic record of the United Progress Alliance (UPA) is a major election issue, and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is making the case that weak leadership and a welfarist ideology led the UPA to fritter away India's economic future. At a press conference earlier today, BJP leader and former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha posed 18 …
Month: March 2014
Ground realities
In its recently released election manifesto, the Indian National Congress sought to take credit for passing the land acquisition act in August 2013: The seminal Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 - a key campaign promise of the Indian National Congress in 2009 - was enacted after …
Rush to judgement
The Association of Democratic Reforms has analysed 280 of 469 Lok Sabha candidates announced by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Indian National Congress (INC) and discovered that: https://twitter.com/ndtvvideos/status/447209053744549888 The data do not seem to be up as yet on the ADR website, so here is quick breakdown by party using the numbers quoted …
Why Modi may have a fight on his hands in Varanasi
It seems clear that Uttar Pradesh (UP) with its 80 Lok Sabha seats is the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) biggest bet in this election and that Narendra Modi is standing from Varanasi in order to boost the BJP's prospects across eastern UP. The BJP's man in UP Amit Shah certainly seems gung-ho: https://twitter.com/AmitShahOffice/status/445149004595097600 With a couple of …
Continue reading Why Modi may have a fight on his hands in Varanasi
How opinion polls fared in the last two general elections
As more and more opinion polls hit the headlines, it's worth recalling how they fared in the two most recent general elections: 2004 https://twitter.com/PankajPachauri/status/408269945563136000 2009 https://twitter.com/PankajPachauri/status/444016247303176192 Note: The figures in parentheses under the NDA and UPA columns are the respective seat tallies of the BJP and Congress Party.
Guilty parties
With political parties beginning to name their candidates, media attention once again turns to the topic of criminals in parliament. Here we look at which parties are guiltiest of facilitating their entry into politics (data from National Election Watch). On the face of it, the Indian National Congress (INC) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have …
Should opinion polls be banned?
Despite my critique of their use of communal violence data, the India Today Group graciously invited me to participate in a panel discussion on opinion polling at the India Today Conclave 2014 on Saturday, Mar 8. I made the following points: Parliamentary seat projections should be treated with skepticism because there is no simple relationship between …
Political parties’ Facebook activity
In response to my post on Political parties' Facebook "likes", Pragya Tiwari correctly pointed out that an additional flaw in that measure is the likelihood that parties and politicians purchase "likes", and that people "talking about this" might be a less manipulable figure. So here is some data (an evening's snapshot on Mar 1): https://twitter.com/dubeyamitabh/status/439781308999282689 …
A question of ordering
A Feb 26 survey by Pew Research's Global Attitudes Project, titled "Indians want political change" (more detailed pdf version here), got a fair amount of media attention, and no surprise why. The poll shows overwhelming support for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi across the length and breadth of the …
Chunauti 