As ever, Media (print and electronic) released 7 different poll predictions as Opinion Polls. With just one exception, all of them gave a comfortable majority to DMK alliance. One of them gave very liberally 177 seats to the current opposition party, that is DMK.
All of these agencies followed a uniform pattern. They would release the Opinion Polls in the afternoon which will be faithfully fed in the evening dailies. These poll results will be obviously published in summary form and beamed in TVs as one liner or ‘Breaking News’. They will build the tempo / curiosity around 3 pm onwards. What will follow next would be the panel discussions from 6 or 7 pm extending well past 10 pm. Thus, they take care of their sale and TRP.
Opinion Polls, in many ways, resemble astrologers’ predictions and that too of the Kings’ Chief Astrologer. Universally, reliability of opinion poll results and astrologers’ estimations are questionable because they speak the words in the tone that will please the ears of their Masters. In Tamil Nadu, this general observation is all the truer because the media unabashedly exhibit their bias towards DMK.
Opinion pollsters have a ‘glorious ‘track record established over several decades. We need not go deep into the past. Let us have a quick review of the last 2 or 3 parliament and assembly elections in TN.
In 2009, Lok Sabha election, it was predicted landslide victory for DMK and Congress; the results did not taste that sweet to DMK alliance. (DMK alliance got 27 and AIADMK got 12 seats) In 2011 assembly elections, many of the polls predicted a return of DMK with a simple majority. Still more comical was the poll conducted by one Professor of Loyola College, Chennai which almost gave 2/3rd majority to DMK! What was the outcome? DMK could not become even the major opposition party.
Similarly, in 2014 Parliament elections none of the opinion polls predicted a complete wash out of DMK. In 2016, the same elements were rejoicing the return of DMK to power. Thus, again and again these opinion makers masquerading as pollsters have been summarily rejected by the Tamil Nadu voters. They can easily see through the motives behind planted stories of the DMK and their paid agents.
Common man knows the tricks of the DMK in the game of the elections. DMK has mastered the art of influencing the fence sitters / undecided voters through these so-called opinion polls. In the same lines, they use the poll results to compel the coalition partners to settle for lesser number of seats, garner more funds from the industrialists and businessmen, browbeat the bureaucracy and the police force.
They use the opinion polls to settle the scores within the family, as in the case of torching Madurai Dinakaran office and it would go to any extent and all in the media are well aware of it. (In 2006, Dinakaran Tamil daily – founded by K. P. Kandasamy in 1977 and currently owned by media conglomerate Sun Group’s Sun Network – conducted an opinion poll which showed M K Stalin as enjoying over 70 percent while his sibling-rival M K Azhagiri getting only 2% of popular approval for a question as to who would you consider as political heir of the then Chief Minister and DMK party leader M Karunanidhi).
