How IT-enabled war rooms help political parties assess winnability before poll results

Voting for fourth phase of UP assembly elections is underway and now focus has shifted from Western Uttar Pradesh (UP) to Central UP. In this Covid-challenged assembly polls, information technology (IT)-enabled election war rooms have emerged as an even bigger help for various parties than ever before. The IT war rooms have helped parties reach out to their voters through virtual rallies. The tech guys commissioned at political parties' offices handling their IT cells; also help party candidates at grassroots level by revealing the possible voting tendencies of voters in constituencies at even the hyper-local level. To reveal the actual depth of this information, then know that political parties can actually get to know how many seats they are going to win in a specific constituency. And that means, candidates can actually start tom-tomming their winning chances in the election ahead of time.

Speaking on how a political party is able to claim that it has acquired a winning momentum even when polls are still underway; Amber Swami, IT Cell, Convener, BJP West UP said, "It's through Artificial Intelligence. IT-enabled war rooms help us assess the voting pattern and tendency of various constituencies at hyper-local level. So, by going through their previous records, poll turnout and some other information, we make an assessment about the constituencies where we are trailing and where we are leading. This helps us make an assessment about how many seats we are winning where polling is being done."

Asked about the percentage of error in this assessment, Swami said that this margin of error would be around 5-8%. He said that IT-enabled election war rooms also help parties to better understand the aspiration of the voters who are going to vote in various phases of elections. Hence, parties change their line of attack on their political rivals in various phases.

Elections in 5 states — Manipur, Punjab, Goa, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand are underway. Out of these 5 states, voting on all assembly seats in Uttarakhand, Goa and Punjab has been completed, whereas Manipur will vote on 28th February and 5th March 2022. Polling in UP will be completed in 7 phases and 3 phases have already been completed.