Pradip Bhandari from Jan Ki Baat conducting a survey with farmers in a JanKiBaat social chaupal in North Karnataka during assembly elections 2018
In continuation of the series, “Building a Political Digital Campaign team in India“, this post will focus on the pollsters & election digital campaign providers in India.
Market research gives more information on decision making and content planning. These market research companies select sample groups, probe them, ask unbiased questions – the results of this can be very valuable to the client (politician / political party).
Engage with a survey provider only if you are prepared to hear from them what you don’t want to hear. Let me share a personal experience.
I had met a young politician who was contesting for an assembly seat for the first time. He was up against a very rich opponent. This politician wanted to change his market research provider because he was hearing only good news from the survey results. It was too good to be true, even for him! After getting an unbiased feedback from a new market research provider, he performed much better than expected. Unfortunately, he lost by a very low margin (about 1,500 votes).
The methodology adopted by each of these are to be considered. Few of the methodologies used are,
When it comes to digital campaign, most of them don’t work for competing political parties during an election. And for internal surveys, they don’t work for competing candidates for a seat.
These days, especially after General elections 2014, politicians and political parties are hiring domain experts to help them during elections.
| Sl No | Company Name | Provides Market Survey | Runs Digital Campaign |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 5Forty3 | Y | Y |
| 2 | ABM | Y | ? |
| 3 | C-Fore | Y | Y |
| 4 | Center For Voting Opinions (CVOTER) | Y | N |
| 5 | Design Boxed | Y | Y |
| 5 | Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC | Y | Y |
| 6 | Jan Ki Baat | Y | N |
| 7 | Rajneethi | Y | Y |
It is very important for the politician or someone he trusts to be involved in the day to day operations of the digital campaign. Don’t get inundated with the words you may hear from the team (Big Data, Data Crunching, AI, Machine Learning), that is purely the problem of the implementors, you should focus on the outcome of what the team does.
Ask questions, however stupid it may be. The Politician is supposed to have a better understanding of the ground reality (at least the intelligent ones), so ought to ensure the team is including the solutions to the problems voters have in your messaging.
There will be several bad days during this journey. You will be trolled. Baseless allegations will be made to provoke you. Stay focused, else you will lose the game even before it starts.
Other posts in this series are,
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