NOTES FROM THE FIELD
ELECTION STUDIES POLITICS

Neelanjan Sircar, Ashish Ranjan and Bhanu Joshi share their notes from the field based on extensive travel across Bihar to get a sense of how voters are making up their minds.

A spate of contradictory opinion polls and an aggressive campaign between bitter foes, Nitish Kumar and Narendra Modi, and bonhomie between once bitter foes, Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad Yadav, have only served to confuse the situation further in the state.

They have focused on constituencies that went to the polls in the first two phases of the election, and tried to tease out what ‘vikas’ means for the people, and how caste influences their decision.

Read the full field notes here: What do voters want?

‘The Hindu’ carried a shorter piece on 28 October: It’s not about caste or beef, but vikas