I attended a lecture by Dr. Uday Nirgudkar at Founder’s Day of Maratha Mandir on 4th March 2024. Nirgudkar is the Group Editor of Marathi News Channel Lokmat 18 on 4th April 2024, he came as Chief Guest for our Founder Day celebration. While talking about himself he informed the audience that his topic for PhD was Psephology. Dr. Nirgudkar enlightened the audience in his 90 minutes speech about how 2047 would be. He spoke about the milestones of Indian economy from 1947 and a few futuristic milestones till 2047 completing a century of Independent India. The term psephology stayed in my mind and therefore I am writing this article.
Psephology is a branch of political science that deals with the scientific analysis of elections or polls. Psephologist is a Political Researcher. The profile of psephologists and pollsters are alike. Psephologists are in demand during elections to predict the voter’s psychology.
Recently, the Chief election commissioner, Rajiv Kumar announced the Lok Sabha elections 2024 dates. The elections will occur in 7 phases, starting on 19 April and ending on 1 June. The Lok Sabha elections 2024 results will be declared on 4 June.
Understanding political ideas, ideologies, institutions, policies, processes, and behaviour, as well as groups, classes, government, diplomacy, law, strategy, and war are areas very important for a psephologist’s understanding. He studies how people will vote in elections.
Psephologists are the ones who use their talents to calculate the results of “exit polls” in any democratically held election and take a final call on which party would win. Some of the famous psephologists in India are Yogendra Yadav, Prashant Kishor, Dr. Nirgudkar, G.V.L. Narsimha Rao, Prannoy Roy, Ranjit Chib etc.
There is a big difference between opinion polls and exit polls. The results continue to keep swinging during the opinion polls, with many factors at play. But in the case of exit polls, the voting pattern should be well captured. However, if we look at the exit polls across various elections so far, they may show the trend somewhat closely, but they fail to capture the mood in terms of vote share, seats in various regions, and the overall tally for various parties.
Polling, however, is not an exact science. People get swayed by opinions of others. In India in villages the Sarpanch gives his views about which party might help the villagers for beratement; in fact, it’s the rural India which sincerely votes. Urban apathy towards voting is very dangerous. In all elections in urban areas, we see a low voting percentage. Sluggishness, lack of interest, and lack of awareness are some reasons why the urban youth shirk from voting.
Since only a small sample of the population are interviewed, final figures are always subject to a margin of error. The sampling method cannot produce exact figures like those found in the science laboratory. People of a community cannot be subjected to precise analytical measurements. Exactly what accounts for an opinion held by a person or for his personality cannot be secluded and studied as precisely as the elements which make up an opinion poll.
Prashant Kishor is one of the renowned psephologists known to have played an instrumental role in strategizing in Narendra Modi’s victory in 2014 Lok Sabha Polls. Kishor is also known for guiding JD(U)’s Nitish Kumar to win 2015 assembly poll. Kishor is often credited with reforming the political scenario in the country. He can come up with ideas for the political parties’ agendas. Strategies for fulfilling the agendas, a very strong desire to succeed, reasoning ability. He thinks out of the box. He has an eye for detailing, clear understanding of voters’ mindset to analyse and synthesis information and data. Psephology can be pursued by those who are good in political science and statistics. There are very few universities that teach the program specifically.
Scope: Psephology is the term derived from the Greek term “Psephos” which means pebble, which the Greeks used as ballots and “Logy” denotes a field of study or academic discipline. The demand for psephologists has raised among various media groups. They are usually contracted by one media group or the other to write relevant columns and articles pertaining to political science or sociology. They are also hired by Political Parties or can also work as freelancers. Currently with elections being organized in every state regularly, psephologists are in demand. Research agencies and institutions also employ psephologists for researching past or historic electoral data. This is critical to establish facts and determine the ‘swing’ and preferences of a certain population.
India doesn’t have an actual post called ‘psephologist’. However, some major parties have in-house analysts who can be called psephologists. Several accomplished media editors, political analysts, and marketing research scientists work as psephologists. But in future, the psephologists will be immense demand. The problem is hardly any Universities teach Psephology as a subject. State Universities must develop a board of studies for preparing a separate syllabus for Psephology.
