Why do pollsters and political experts get it wrong quite often?

New Delhi: The outcome of the Haryana elections was contrary to what had been predicted by pollsters and so-called political experts, observers and analysts.

This is not the new trend. Exit polls went horribly wrong in the Lok Sabha elections earlier this year and a repeat of that was seen in Haryana now.

Also read: ‘Pradeep Gupta retire’: Exit polls face existential crisis after Haryana poll results

Prior to these, the pollsters also failed to gauge the mood during the assembly elections in Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan in November-December 2023.

Before any election, the armchair political experts, observers and analysts will give unlimited 'gyan' on why a particular party is winning those polls. But if the results come contrary to their claims, then they give hundreds of reasons why that party lost the polls. After the results, the advantage of hindsight is there but why couldn't they predict it in advance? That's the question.

Similarly, it has been consistently seen that journalists too fail to assess the ground situation and end up embarrassing not only themselves but also their organisations.

The primary reason for this that most of these newspersons have stopped doing due diligence. They won't travel far and wide and just go to the capital city, catch hold of a senior journalist and get 'gyan' and other information from that person. 

Stringers have become the biggest sources of journalists covering elections. They don't do the hard work of seeking the feedback of the people from the ground.

Though the voter nowadays have become very smart and hardly reveal their mind to the extent that sometimes they mislead the reporters, the journalists should at least get the trend correct. That is possible if they talk to a cross-section of people and instead of asking who is winning or losing focus on issues prevailing on the ground. It will certainly give a broad idea of what the people will have in their minds while pressing the button.

These days, journalists have stopped doing the leg work or following the basic ethics and that is why the demise of journalism seems not too far away. Some years ago, it was unthinkable.