Recently I met my MLA, who is from the BJP, and told him about my analysis extrapolating from the recent urban local body elections, which gave Congress an absolute majority. He countered that the BJP has never been strong at the sub-state level so one shouldn’t read too much into these elections. So I decided to create this tool which uses a slider which you can use to decide how much importance to give to the ULB polls. A value of 0 represents the seat distribution as per the 2008 elections. A value of 1 uses an extrapolation of the ULB elections only (without using information from the 2008 polls). I hope you have fun with this tool.
You might also notice that I now give you the actual seat distribution party-wise.
I think that there is a minor flaw in this table that it has included constituencies which did not see the 2013 ULB elections: out of 28 constituencies in Bangalore, I think only 1 Anekal has seen ULB elections in 2013. So did you base your projections of Bangalore constituencies on the earlier BBMP elections? Similarly, there are many constituencies which are wholly rural and did not see any ULB elections this year. So what information did you use about such rural constituencies?
Although the slider is fun to use, I can think of a dozen variables which skew the projections, but which themselves cannot be incorporated into this slider.
For the Bangalore constituencies and the wholly rural constituencies I’ve assumed results will replicate 2008. So flaw there.
Variables are way too many. These tools are to just give you an approximate idea. And yes, they are fun to use!
As usual, good post.
Since there are many variables, we should see overall seat distribution as a probability distribution. Here is my initial cut at predicting 2013 Karnataka assembly outcomes:
http://chappale.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/2013-karnataka-assembly-elections-predicting-seat-distribution-initial-cut/