The analysis of ‘How India Voted” in 2019 being presented in The Hindu are based on a nationwide post-poll survey (The National Election Study, 2019) conducted by the Lokniti programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi.
This being a study based on face-to-face interviews of sampled respondents after polling is over, the numbers presented in the articles this week are based on data received till the sixth phase.
So far, 21,647 voters have been interviewed at 1,188 polling stations located in 396 Assembly segments spread across 184 Lok Sabha constituencies in 24 States.
The survey is different from an exit poll in which voters are approached outside the polling booth on voting day. Instead, voters randomly selected from the electoral rolls were approached by trained field investigators for an interview at their place of residence after votes had been cast in their respective constituencies but before the results were known.
The sampling process adopted by us was as follows — we first determined the sample size for each State based on the share of the State’s electorate in the total electorate of all States where the survey was to be conducted.
We then made some selective adjustments (small States, for instance, were assigned a higher sample in order to achieve a decent sample for analysis).
The target was 100 interviews per Lok Sabha constituency.
The selection at each of these stages was by the systematic random sampling procedure. The survey was designed and analysed by a team of researchers at Lokniti, CSDS. The survey was coordinated by scholars from the Lokniti Network in each State.
