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EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE
PUNE, June 10: Psephologist and professor of Statistics at the Indian Statistical Institute in Delhi Rajeev Karandikar today predicted that the party composition in Lok Sabha is not likely change much after the general elections. He also observed that there appeared no traces of the polarisation between the national parties and regional parties which may increase the number of seats for the major parties.
The trend of hung parliament would most probably will prevail after the elections, he said the Psephologist developed the models for projecting the results of the 1998 general elections along with Yogendra Yadav of Delhi based Centre for Studies in Developing Societies (CSDS) while speaking at a Meet the Press function at Pune Union of Working Journalists.
Rajeeva Karandikar explained the models developed by him and Yogendra Yadav for projecting the results of 1998 general elections in elaborate details. These projections were published in India Today before being included in the election telecast on Star TV network.
He said they had carried out two separate surveys, one prior to polling and the other a couple of days after the elections, to find out the trends. The sample chosen for the survey at national-level was 16,000 voters of which 9,500 including 600 from Maharashtra could actually be interviewed. The sample was selected at random from the voters list released by the election commission, he added.
He said they studied the models used by Clive Pain for projecting the results of general elections in United Kingdom over the last 25 years. However, he pointed out, those models were not suitable in Indian context.
Karandikar said they were forced to use the data from only the general elections of 1996 while projecting the reports as the data of the previous polls had lost relevance due to the changing political scenario. Cooperation of local journalists was also sought to understand the impact of the prevailing factors in various states, he added.
Estimating the impact of Sonia Gandhi's participation in the electoral campaign was the most challenging job, he recalled. Voters were asked easy to understand questions formed on the basis of common sense for the purpose, he added.
Vice-president of Pune Union of Working Journalists Abhay Kulkarni introduced the guess. President of Pune Union of Working Journalists Shashikant Bhagvat proposed a vote of thanks.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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