Citizen Matters conducted a pre-BBMP poll survey starting last month, to find out voters’ preferences and problems in Bengaluru. Here are the selected key findings of the online survey.

1. 81% of the respondents knew that BJP got a majority in 2010 elections and ruled BBMP so far. Around 78% of the Kannada respondents knew BJP ruled BBMP after 2010.

2. The survey was launched before all parties declared their candidates. We asked: Which political party represents Bangalore’s interest best? 33% believe it is BJP. 23.9% say it’s AAP. 21% believe it is Loksatta. Mere 14.2% believe it is Congress.(Kannada: BJP- 50%; JDS – 21.6%, Congress – 13.5%)

3. 51% of the respondents for English survey said the party of the candidate doesn’t matter in this poll. In Kannada survey, only 30.1% of them said the party of the candidate doesn’t matter.

4. We asked what’s important to you during an election.
   Candidate’s individual capabilities and clean image of candidate matter to 84% of respondents in English survey. (Kannada: 53.7 and 65.9%)
   Past work record of candidate matters to 74% of the voters. (Kannada: 67.1 %)
   Manifesto matters to 38.7% of them. (Kannada:13.4 %)
   Candidate’s charm-20.1%. (Kannada: 39 %)
   Corruption and scams of the party elsewhere in India matters to 26.4% voters. (Kannada: 12.2%)
   Political party of the candidate matters to 19.9% (Kannada: 39%)

5. Guess what matters the least to voters? Caste/religion of the candidate! Only 1.9% of the respondents said it matters to them! 3.7% of Kannada respondents said caste and religion matter to them.

6. We asked: “Would you vote for your current corporator, if she/he contests elections once again?”
   77.4% of the voters said NO! 65.1% of Kannada respondents said NO to this question.

7. We asked: “Do you think your current corporator acted independently, free of pressure?”
   79.3% of the voters said NO! 70.9% of them said NO in Kannada survey.

8. We asked: How trustworthy is your corporator? Around 68% of the English respondents and 54.9% of Kannada respondents rated it with ‘zero and ‘low’

9. Around 68% of the English respondents and 57.9% of Kannada respondents rated Interaction of the corporator with public with ‘zero and ‘low’ .

10. Around 70% of the English respondents and 55.4 % of Kannada respondents rated accessibility of the corporator to public with ‘zero’ or ‘low’

11. 83.3% of the voters had voted in 2014 parliamentary elections. 67.3% of them voted in 2013 elections. 52.1% of them have voted in BBMP election 2010. 10% have not voted in any election.
    Among Kannada respondents, 69.5% had voted in BBMP election 2015. 82.9% of them voted in Vidhana Sabha elections 2013, while 87% of them voted in Parliamentary election 2014.

12. Above 50% voters rated their corporators as ‘Very poor’ in the issues that are to be addressed by the corporators.

13. Problems faced in the city of Bengaluru:
    Bad roads with potholes -81.2%. (Kannada: 76.8%)
    Garbage black spots-78.2%. (Kannada: 80.5% )
    Non-walkable footpaths-77.8% (Kannada: 41.5%)
    Lack of public toilets-68.6% (Kannada: 57.3%)
    Lack of parks and playgrounds-54% (Kannada:45.1%)
    Encroachment of public land 49% (Kannada: 32.9%)
    Non-collection of garbage from homes-35.6% (Kannada: )
    No street lights- 34.1% (Kannada: 37.8%)
    Lack of primary health centres-33.7% (Kannada: 35.4%)
    Lack of government schooling -16.1% (Kannada:19.5% )

Respondent profile:

• 42.1% of the respondents were aged between 31 and 40.  (Kannada: 48.2%)
  19.2% of them were aged 41-50.  (Kannada: 19.3%)
  19.2% of them were between 25 and 30. (Kannada: 20.5 %)

• 51.3% of the respondents for our survey are graduates. (Kannada: 57%)
  45.2% of them are postgraduates.(Kannada: 34.2 %)

• 36.4% of the respondents for our survey are employed in IT/ITES. (Kannada: 32.1%)
  29.5% of them are employed in other private companies. (Kannada: 44.4%)
  15.3% of the respondents for our survey were into business/ self employment. (Kannada: 11.1%)
  4.6% of them were retired senior citizens. (Kannada: 0%)
  4.2% of them were in Medical / law/ CA sectors. (Kannada: 1.2%)
  Only 1.9% of them were homemakers.(Kannada: 0%)

• 30.7% of the respondents did not reveal their religion. In Kannada survey, 20.7% did not reveal their religion.
  Another 48.3% of them are Hindus. In Kannada survey, 73% said they were Hindus.
  Respondents who said they were Christians or Muslims – 5.2% and 4.4% each.

• Ward 150-Bellandur and ward 85-Doddanekundi have the highest number of respondents – 21 respondents and 9 respondents each, for English survey. In Kannada survey, Vasanthapura, Uttarahalli and Hampinagar wards have highest respondents: that is, 3 each. Let’s face it – this was the response our survey got, though we see a lot of talk online on polls and politics.

• Only 12.6% of the respondents for our English online survey were women. Kannada survey got its 4.8% responses from women, We must say this is dismal!

• 76.2% of the respondents for the English survey could speak Kannada. 92% of them said they can speak in English, and 82.8% in Hindi. 28.4% – Telugu. 42.5% – Tamil.
  In Kannada survey, 65.1% said they can speak English, 57.8% – Hindi, 18.1% – Tamil, 27.7% – Telugu.

Limitations of this online survey:

• Our Kannada survey got 81 responses, while English survey got 261 responses. Yes, in one month we were able to get only so many responses. The number of respondents is terribly low compared to the population in the city.

• There is visible difference of pattern in both English and Kannada surveys. This comes from the fact that the demographics and backgound of the respondents are quite different.

• There was no option to target any demographic categories, hence we did not get enough responses to rate the corporators from each wards.

• The survey was promoted only on social media and our newsletters. Rest of the promotion was mostly organic.

• The survey was meant only for those who are online. This limited the survey only to the target audience who is basically professionals or those who work online. While an offline survey would have been more inclusive, we didn’t have the bandwidth to take it offline by using sampling methods and going door to door.

• We wanted to minimise the chances of duplicate entries or rigging of the survey, hence we made it mandatory to login using a gmail id. Hence the survey required a gmail id to login to, and those who didn’t have a gmail id may not have been able to respond. This might have limited the number of responses the survey got.

We thank all our readers and well-wishers who promoted the survey and shared it online. A special thanks to Oneindia-Kannada for helping us promote the Kannada survey.

We welcome ideas and solutions on how to track the performance and rate the corporators, in future. This is very important as there is no single agency in the city that does it.

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