ET poll for 2014 elections: BJP may face a consolidated opposition instead of a divided one, ET, ET poll for 2014 elections, BJP, Congress, Lok Sabha poll 2014, Bihar, UP, Latest poll updates.

ET poll for 2014 elections: BJP may face a consolidated opposition instead of a divided one.

Opinion polls in India are, at the best of times, a hit and miss affair, though to be fair their strike rate in the recent past has been better than it used to be.

When a poll is conducted a full six months before elections are due, their use as a predictive tool becomes even more fraught with danger. And when alliances could still be forged or broken, that adds another dimension to the unpredictability of the outcome.

All of these factors must inform any analysis of what an opinion poll's 'findings' are. But there is another factor, perhaps the most important here, which tends often to be overlooked. Any student of Indi's electoral history will tell you that 'tactical voting' is an important aspect of our polity.

Most often, this term is used to describe the voting behaviour of the Muslim community, but it is seriously misleading to see tactical voting as a monopoly of the Muslims.

The reality is that, given our first-past-thepost system, there is a strong tendency for voters not to 'waste' their vote by picking candidates or parties that are simply not in the race, even though they may be the ones a particular voter prefers over all others. What is this, if not tactical voting? Essentially it amounts to voting not for the party or person you like, but the least disliked among those who can win.

What does this have to do with opinion polls? While people might vote tactically in an actual election, they obviously do not do so in an opinion poll.

ET's opinion poll suggests BJP will win 33% votes in Bihar, followed by JD(U) with 16%, Congress with 13% and the RJD with 12%.

Within these vote shares, it finds that 48% of Muslims prefer Congress. Not even half the community is backing a single party. Is this likely to be the community's actual behaviour in 2014?

A lot could hinge, therefore, on behind whom the Muslims consolidate. Congress is unlikely to be that party simply because it does not appear to have any other consolidated chunk of votes behind it. The choice then boils down really to the JD(U) and RJD.

The RJD may historically appear to have a superior claim on the Muslim vote, but Nitish Kumar's strong anti-Modi stance and the incarceration of Lalu Prasad may well tilt the balance in favour of the Kurmi leader.

Other caste groups, particularly from among the intermediate castes, could also see the rise of the BJP as a threat of a return to upper caste hegemony and seek a platform to prevent it happening. Again, the JD(U) could be best placed to tap in on this fear.

Finally, of course, the possibility of a JD(U)-Congress alliance is very much on the cards. If that happens, it would dramatically alter equations despite the negligible presence of the Congress in Bihar.

Tactical voting matters even more in UP, because Muslims themselves form a larger block and because there are at least two other blocks - the Dalits behind Mayawati and the Yadavs behind SP - which offer them viable platforms to counter the Modi threat.

At the moment, in the aftermath of Muzaffarnagar and given the beating that the Akhilesh Yadav government's image has taken over its tenure, the BSP seems better placed to gain from this factor, but as we said at the outset, there are six months left before the elections are held and a lot could change in the interim.

Also remember that tactical voting happens not on a state-wide basis but on a seatto-seat basis, which means while the overall numbers might suggest that BJP faces a fragmented opposition, in reality there may be consolidated opposition in each seat. The more it is projected as being ahead of the rest, the more this factor will come into play. Success in opinion polls might, thus, prove to be the basis for its failure in the actual polls.

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