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Karnataka election: This Kannada news portal predicted Congress' big win two months ago
As per the Kannada web portal Eedina's “mega survey” on April 26-27, it was predicted that the Congress party would secure a range of 132 to 140 seats.
The Congress's resounding victory with 135 seats in Karnataka may have exceeded the expectations of many, but for a small Kannada web portal Eedina (eedina.com), the election results came as no surprise. Remarkably, this web portal had accurately predicted the outcome well in advance, during the last week of April itself.
As per the portal’s “mega survey” on April 26-27, it was predicted that the Congress party would secure a range of 132 to 140 seats, while the BJP was projected to receive between 57 and 65 seats. They also predicted 19-25 seats for the Janata Dal (Secular).
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Following the Congress’ big win, the team of Eedina was elated Saturday as the election results matched their predictions 100%. A video clip shared by the portal from their newsroom on Twitter also featured political activist and psepholoist Yogendra Yadav, who hailed this rare win, which the group was able to achieve despite the lack of resources available to mainstream media houses. "If Your channel was in English and you were based in Delhi, you would have been a national hero," Yadav told them.
Yadav, who wrote an opinion piece for The Print on Karnataka election during the same time, cited Eedina’s impressive pre-poll survey and highlighted the rigorous process through which the organisation made such an accurate prediction.
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Describing Eedina as an alternative peoples’ media in Kannada, Yadav highlighted that Eedina engaged nearly 1,000 trained citizen journalists to conduct the survey across 204 out of 224 assembly constituencies.
Dr H.V. Vasu, editor of Eedina and the project head of the survey told The Frontline that the survey was conducted between March 13 and April 21 and the sample size was the largest among different surveys at 41,169.
Yadav, who gave technical advice on the survey design, also credited rigorous sampling methodology employed by Eedina, which he said was a fair representation of the demographic profile of Karnataka. The survey utilised a methodology based on random selection. This involved the random selection of booths as well as the respondents from the voters' list of the sampled booth.
