National

The methodology

This analysis is based on a post-election survey conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi, exclusively for The Hindu. The survey was conducted in all five States where Assembly elections were conducted — in Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh on December 1 and in Mizoram on November 20.

The field work was conducted on December 1 and 2. Voters were interviewed in their homes soon after the voting. The field work was completed before counting began on December 4. Interviews were conducted using a standard structured questionnaire.

In order to maintain secrecy, dummy ballot papers and dummy ballot boxes were used while eliciting from the respondents the answer to the voting question.

The sample was selected in three stages. First, the Assembly constituencies were selected. Then the localities where the survey would be done were chosen and finally the respondents who would be interviewed were identified.

In Delhi, the survey was conducted in 69 of the 70 Assembly constituencies. The survey could not be conducted in the Paharganj Assembly constituency.

In the second stage of sampling, involving the selection of localities, in each of the 69 Assembly constituencies four localities were randomly selected. Thus 276 localities were chosen.

Finally, in the third stage, the respondents were randomly selected from the electoral rolls. In order to account for any non-response from a chosen voter, a slightly higher number of respondents was selected than the actual number of interviews that were expected to be conducted. Of the total of 2,760 identified as respondents, 1,526 were finally interviewed in Delhi.

A team of 70 field investigators conducted the field work.

The central team at the CSDS comprised Himanshu Bhattacharya, Banasmita Bora, Chetan Bahrmoria, Abhay Datar, K.A.Q.A. Hilal, Bhaskar Jha, Pusuthottam Kumar Jha, Dhananjai Joshi, Rajat Joshi, Manoj Kumar, Kanchan Malhotra and Ved Prakash.

© Copyright 2000 - 2009 The Hindu