Jharkhand Assembly Elections: CSDS-Lokniti Survey

Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren with his wife and MLA-elect Kalpana Soren meet Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge, Lok Sabha LoP Rahul Gandhi and party General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.
| Photo Credit: ANI

The mandate in Jharkhand has, yet again, caused a roadblock for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The key elements that decided the fate of the election can be summed up to the tenacity and the ability of State-level forces to face and respond to all-India intrusions and, second, the tough competition between regional identity-based politics centred around Adivasis vis-à-vis an attempt to draw in Adivasis toward a set of aggressive and all-India concerns that are centred on cultural identity.

At the tactical level, the emphatic victory of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM)-led alliance was a victory: of effective coalition management and of a campaign that focused on issues that struck a chord with voters. But beyond that, Jharkhand saw a clear competition between two alternative narratives. The JMM-led government was defending its track record in governance and its image of representing tribal interests. The BJP-led alliance sought to present a wider narrative to try and appeal to a wider cross-section and aggressively attack the incumbent government on non-performance and high levels of corruption. 

Methodology

The findings are from the Jharkhand Assembly Election Study 2024 that was conducted by the Lokniti programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi, between November 12-19, 2024. A total of 3,035 respondents were interviewed across 30 Assembly Constituencies and 150 polling stations of Jharkhand.

Using multi-stage random sampling, this procedure ensured that the selected sample was fully representative of the cross-section of voters. The constituencies where the survey was conducted were randomly selected using the probability proportional to size method (adjusting the probability of choosing a particular constituency according to the size of its electorate). Thereafter, five polling stations were selected in each of the sampled constituencies using the systematic random sampling method. Finally, 40 respondents were selected at random using the systematic random sampling method from the electoral rolls of the sampled polling stations. Of these 40, we set a target of 20 interviews per polling station.

Once we identified our sample, trained field investigators conducted face-to-face interviews using a pre-designed mobile App. The questionnaire was translated into Hindi. Though the sample is relatively small, the total number of voters interviewed represent the social reality of the voters in Jharkhand, i.e., the sample is truly representative with regard to the social composition of the State. Weights were applied to make corrections for under-representation of any social groups. Weights were also applied based on the actual result.

The study was directed by Sanjay Kumar, Suhas Palshikar and Sandeep Shastri.