Social media Exit Polls: NDA to cross 300, big gains for AAP

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Social-Media-Exit-Polls

BANGALORE: Analysis of social media conversations on the theme of Indian elections shows that Narendra Modi led BJP and its coalition will win more than 300 of the 543 parliamentary seats in the country.
We at Simplify360 analysed lakhs of online conversations and found that the Aam Admi Party has high popularity among India’s online audience. This is almost catching up the grand old party, Indian National Congress.
Based on social media Exit Poll, the tally for major parties are as follows:

NDA 310-342
Congress 98-127
AAP 86-117

Methodology:
First, we monitored millions of daily online conversations on the theme of politics. We then extracted tweets related to the major parties and leaders between 1st April, 2014 and 12th May, 2014.
We classified tweets based on their sentiment – positive, negative or neutral – and sorted them state-wise.
If a party received 70% of positive mentions, we took it to mean that it will also get that much share of the state’s parliamentary seats.
The same methodology was followed for union territories (except Lakshadweep).
The range is arrived by rounding off the figures.

Social media scenario in April
Based on more than 77 lakh online conversations everyday in India on the theme of politics, we found that Narendra Modi, Arvind Kejriwal and Rahul Gandhi were the three most talkes about politicians.
Our Simplify360 Social Index (SSI) takes into account four parameters –  awareness, spread, prominence and favourability.
Based on these criteria, BJP’s prime ministerial hopeful stamped his authority with an SSI score of 86.
Following him were Arvind Kejriwal (SSI score of 83) and Rahul Gandhi (SSI score of 78).

Top-10-Politicians

Among the parties, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) maintained its lead with an SSI score of 86. The Congress came in second (SSI score of 84) and the AAP (SSI score of 82).
Top-Parties

Social media exit polls: Possible scenarios
During our analysis we found that regional parties do not figure prominently on Twitter. For example, a political heavyweight like the Samajwadi Party received around 3% of the positive mentions in tweets from Uttar Pradesh.
Therefore, the figures for the national parties may be slightly inflated, at the cost of the regional parties.
Thus, there may be two possible scenarios once the real results are out:
Case 1 : Twitter represents India
The online medium is more influential than the figures indicate. There are instances where the conversations in the online sphere have influenced the decision making of the offline population as well.
For example, people who are online often influence their parents and relatives back home on themes such as shopping, politics, sports etc.
In this scenario, the final tally for the three major parties will be close to our exit poll figures.
But if otherwise, the following conclusion can be drawn,
Case 2:  Twitter does not represent India
As we said earlier, regional parties are grossly underrepresented in Twitter data. This is not surprising, given the around 10% penetration of broadband internet services in  India.
But whatever be the final outcome, online data analytics reveals that AAP is set to be India’s 3rd largest party in terms of vote share, whatever may be its final seats tally.
However, let us assume that social media represents 70% of India’s voting population. In this scenario, the final tally would be as follows:
NDA: 217 – 240
Congress – 67 – 89
AAP – 61 – 82
The sample size of our study was 6,11,744 tweets (with a positive sentiment), which is far more than the sample size of traditional exit polls.