We observed what can go wrong when journalists who lack an understanding of statistical inference make claims about data in How Mail Today got its analysis of communal violence exactly wrong. This tendency became clear once again from an Apr 26 article in The Hindu titled Gujarat behind West Bengal in new factory jobs, as …
Month: April 2014
Deflating expectations
Every time the price of onions rises, pundits remind us (here and here) of what happened in Delhi in 1998, when a spike in the price of onions is believed to have contributed to the state election defeat of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Inflation does appear to matter greatly to Indian voters: "price rise" was …
Is AAP India’s most criminal party?
With candidates declared for six of the nine rounds of voting in this never-ending general election, a partial analysis can now be done of how many stand accused of criminal activity and in what proportion parties are awarding tickets to such folks (data from National Election Watch, also see preliminary analysis here). The chart below …
Running to stand still
The Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) continues to advance in the opinion polls. The NDTV-Hansa survey projects a majority for the alliance if elections were held in March: https://twitter.com/ndtv/status/455743412189155329 The CNN-IBN-CSDS-The Week election tracker is more cautious in its forecast, but has also projected a 20-seat improvement in the NDA's seats tally over the …
No obvious correlation between turnout and anti-incumbency
Voter turnout in the first three rounds of India's general election has shown a distinct increase by historical standards, particularly in some of the more populous states. https://twitter.com/MilanV/status/454435873321263104 This has given rise to speculation that this is bad news for the incumbent United Progressive Alliance (UPA). https://twitter.com/cvoter/status/454517133767372800 The UPA is clearly trailing in opinion polls, …
Continue reading No obvious correlation between turnout and anti-incumbency
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