Opinion polls are absurd: Jayalalithaa

MANDATE 2004

Coming down heavily on opinion polls, which gave lesser number of seats to the AIADMK-Bharatiya Janata Party combine in Tamil Nadu, AIADMK chief J Jayalalithaa here today said pollsters never predicted rightly in the state.

Jayalalithaa said the joint opinion poll commissioned by Indian Express and NDTV and conducted by AC Nielsen was yet another "orchestrated opinion poll that usually does the rounds before elections".

Describing the poll predictions "absurd", she said such surveys had invariably been proved wrong since it revealed a "total lack of understanding of the lifeline of democracy"""the people of the country.

The opinion poll has predicted that the DMK-Congress combine will win 34 of the 39 Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu, leading to a gain of 21 seats since the 1999 elections. The survey also said the chief minister was facing a strong anti-incumbency wave in the state.

Jayalalithaa said most of the opinion polls employed "questionable methodologies and inadequate samples to manipulate results in order to sensationalise and sway the voter behaviour."

"Pollsters' predictions of election results in Tamil Nadu are as reliable as predicting the results of one-day cricket matches. They should perhaps rely on the toss of a coin instead of making pseudo erudite inferences based on thin samples," she said.

Citing the 2001 Assembly elections, where the pollsters went off the mark when the AIADMK swept the polls, Jayalalithaa said in a release, "The pollsters had initially written me and the AIADMK off. As the date of the election neared, they had to improve their forecast and indicate that it would be a close contest. What happened in the end is now history."

She said in the 1998 parliamentary elections the pollsters had predicted that the AIA-DMK-BJP alliance would get four seats, while the alliance ended up winning 30 seats.

"How can one take opinion polls seriously with such disastrous predictions belied by subsequent events," she said.

Except in 1996, no opinion poll about elections in Tamil Nadu had ever been proved right, she added.

Jayalalithaa also criticised newspapers and magazines for ranking chief ministers. She called the pollsters' methodology dubious.

"Typical is the India Today - ORG-MARG rating of chief ministers published in September 2003 and February 2004. The September 2003 rating, published in the India Today, former Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot ranked first. But in the recent Assembly elections he was voted out by the people," she said.

The same opinion poll also reported about the declining popularity of Delhi Chief Minister Shiela Dikshit, but she was voted back to power, the Tamil Nadu chief minister said.