AAP circulates fake Chanakya Poll for Punjab causing huge twitter uproar
Thursday, February 02, 2017It all started with Ankit Lal, Head of AAP Social Media Cell tweeting that a poll by Today’sChankaya projects AAP with 100 out of 117 seats in Punjab. This set the stage to trigger a huge twitter uproar.
The
participants of this twitter exchange included Today’s Chankaya who not only
denied their involvement with the survey but also denounced it categorically as
fake, AAP’s former co-founders Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan and Yashwant
Desmukh Founder-Psephologist of CVoter.
AAP
then circulated over social media a very similar poll for Goa where they
claimed like Delhi they would clean sweep Goa.
AAP
is a habitual offender in circulation of fake polls. For Delhi University Student Body Elections, AAP’s
Student wing CYSS plastered a fake poll in hoardings all over Delhi claiming
they would clean sweep the polls in 2015. AAP came a poor distant third to BJP's ABVP and
Congress-NSUI registering a mere 20% vote share – a whopping 35% vote share
decline, just months after they won Delhi with a mind boggling 55% vote share.
Last year, fearing a further decline in their popularity, they skipped
contesting DUSU elections all together.
Some
months ago, the polling agency Today’s Chanakya was in the news of a touted
leaked confidential electoral analysis they did for BJP submitted to Narendra Modi.
While this blog can’t vouch for the authenticity of the document below, this is
first page of their alleged letter as found circulating in social media:
Yogendra
Yadav and Prashant Bhushan were key members of AAP’s top leadership during the
2014 Lok Sabha & Delhi Assembly 2015 Polls when AAP used to circulate many “internal
polls”. Yogendra Yadav himself a renowned psephologist had published internal
polls of his constituency he contested in Haryana during Lok Sabha 2014
projecting himself near winning position only to find himself losing his
security deposit.
This
intricate web of relationship between political parties, polling agencies and
media is bound to throw back at the quality of published polls dished out to
the general public means that poll numbers are increasingly manipulated to be
politically weaponised tools to condition public opinion rather than simply
capturing them at any given time interval as it is meant for. Readers are unable to reliably
tell a good poll from a bad one and increasingly dismissing all polls as bias. This
blog was conceived to precisely address this problem – through critiquing
published polls attempting to demand more accountability and transparency by
polling agencies. See our archive HERE
“Ever since the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) was elected to rule Delhi, the word "alternate politics" has become the new buzzword on social media. While alternate politics is familiar to political scientists, it is new to the lexicon of the hoi polloi who actually elect their representatives. So how is "alternate politics" different from mainstream politics? "Alternate politics" is about setting the agenda for mainstream political parties to take up issues that are crucial to the environment and to the very idea of human survival itself. "Alternate politics" believes that social activism, NGO movements, et al can transform into political movements.”
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