Delhi elections: How Kejriwal has misused opinion polls

Read the counter view here: Opinion polls: Whether they are right or wrong, AAP is surely leading the race

Over the last one week, we have seen several ups and downs as far as the results of opinion polls for Delhi Assembly elections are concerned. Those who are students of psephology know that the principle of recall value is benefitting Arvind Kejriwal on paper as far as survey results are concerned. The last incumbent government always has a greater recall value and hence very often surveys often show the outgoing chief minister as one of the favourite faces.

That does not necessarily mean a groundswell of support for the leader and could be quite deceptive. The glaring example is Congress' former chief minister Sheila Dikshit who appeared to be a front runner in terms of popularity in Delhi prior to Delhi Assembly Polls in 2013. However we all know that not only her party got a historical drubbing but she herself had to suffer a massive defeat.

This explains the logic of Kejriwal being shown ahead of other leaders when it comes to people's choice for the CM post. We have also seen over the last few days the flip-flop in results of the opinion polls. Many of the opinion polls are projecting BJP ahead of others and forming the government on its own.

No discussion about poll surveys in Delhi can be completed without mentioning the talk of the bizarre poll surveys conducted by AAP. It blows its own trumpet and with every such poll survey it loses some more credibility. During the last assembly polls, AAP claimed that it will get 47 seats and it got 28 seats only. In Lok Sabha polls also, it predicted a grand tally for itself . When the result came out, AAP created a world record by becoming a political party which has the largest number of candidates losing deposits in a general election.

In a brazen display of blatant lies, AAP is again predicting a favourable outcome for itself in these polls. Whatever the results may be, it is clear that AAP's survey is not credible. The sad part is that AAP is tarnishing the science of psephology which is very useful for common people, public personalities and even governance systems. Kejriwal and his band of "rebels without cause" are hell bent on (mis)using every institution, tradition, body of knowledge to get elected in Delhi.

The way AAP has (mis)used psephology as a campaign tool will have a long term impact. The mass media, a section of which is also getting manipulated by AAP, would realise this in days to come. Imagine a situation where political parties in India publishing their own surveys claiming their victories. Clearly psephology would become the most discredited science in the country. And all this because someone wants to grab the power in the garb of "aam aadmi".