As the seventh and final phase of the Lok Sabha elections 2019 draws to a close, all eyes will now shift to exit poll results, which will give an early indication of the outcome four days before the verdict is announced on May 23.

The exit poll has been conducted by IPSOS, world’s top international pollster that boasts a solid track record of predicting the electoral outcomes of several elections around the world with accuracy.

Exit Polls Results 2019 Survey Methodology

To envisage the number of seats likely to be won by each of the political parties (or alliances) contesting the general election, a total of 199 parliamentary constituencies (PC) were selected out of 543 across 28 states of India. Within the parliamentary constituencies, 796 assembly constituencies (AC) were selected, and then 4,776 individual polling station areas (PS) were selected for conducting interviews. In each polling station, around 25 voters were randomly selected depending on the terrain and voter turnouts in that particular polling station. A total 1,21,542 voters were interviewed from the 199 constituencies.

For selection of PC, AC and PS, multistage sampling process was adopted.

Stage 1:

Selection of PCs was done considering past election results at the parliamentary constituency level like:

Constituencies where a party has not lost an election in the past two / three elections

Constituencies where the winning margin is low

Constituencies which flip-flop election to election

Constituencies that have “heavy weight” candidates

Stage 2:

Four to six assembly constituencies were selected in each parliamentary constituency using systematic random sampling (SRS) process.

Stage 3:

In each assembly constituency, six polling stations were selected using systematic random sampling (SRS) process.

Stage 4:

Voters were randomly selected outside the polling station. Every third voter coming out after casting vote were selected.

Survey was conducted on the election day in all seven phases of the polling. The interviewing process starts when the polls open and continues throughout the day until polls close to ensure better representation of the voters, coming in at different time cluster for voting.

Each polling booth was covered for one hour, by three interviewers. They then moved to next polling booth. All interviews were conducted using computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) devices.

To overcome prejudice/response bias, election symbol including party name of key parties contesting in respective constituency were shown in one screen, without being the screen gets scrolled. When asking the voting related question, a virtual polling booth scenario was created, wherein we hand over the data capturing device to respondent on which they were allowed to mark the party, they had voted for.

The questionnaire was translated into vernacular language which is mainly spoken in the respondents’ State.

Data were weighted to reflect the constituency profile on age, gender, caste, religion and voter turnout.