Statistical analysis of performance of opinion polls in Indian elections

Abstract

Opinion and exit polls are conducted by various agencies to forecast the actual results. While these polls are bound to be affected by sampling fluctuations, and there is huge operational challenge in predicting such outcome in a diverse country like India, the huge variability and seemingly poor predictability warrants a systemic study that analyzes the performances of the polls considering statistical principles. Our aim was to systemically analyze the performance of these polls in India. Towards this, we planned to systematically collate all such exit poll results from the past 5-8 years and analyze their effectiveness in terms of how successful they were in predicting poll results. Our objective was to compare the performance of the various agencies, reflect on their reported research methodology and procedures.