The third round of the Mood of the Nation (MOTN) Survey was conducted by Lokniti, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi for ABP News between April 28 and May 17, 2018 among 15,859 respondents spread across 19 States of India - Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal. The survey was conducted at 700 locations in 175 Assembly Constituencies (ACs). These are the same ACs (except 10 in Karnataka and 1 in Andhra Pradesh) where the second round of the MOTN Survey had been conducted in January 2018. Each AC was located in a different Parliamentary Constituency (PC). The total sample size targeted was 16,100 with an AC/PC-wise target of about 92 interviews. The number of PCs to be sampled in a State was determined based on the percentage share of that particular State’s electorate in the total/combined electorate of all 19 states. The sampling design adopted was multi-stage random sampling. This procedure ensures that the selected sample is fully representative of the cross-section of voters in the country. The PCs 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). Then, one AC was selected from within each sampled PC using the random sampling method. Thereafter, four polling stations were selected from within each of the sampled ACs using the systematic random sampling method (the polling stations across all States, except Delhi, were sampled afresh in this round). Finally, the respondents were also randomly selected using the systematic method from the electoral rolls of the sampled polling stations (except Odisha where electoral rolls were not available).

Once we identified our sample among the electorate, trained field investigators or FIs (a training workshop for them was conducted in each state) were sent to meet them. They were asked to interview only those whose names had been sampled (except Odisha). However at some locations the non-availability of sampled respondents or difficulty in finding households necessitated replacements/substitutions. Our investigators sat down in the homes of people and asked them a detailed set of questions which could take up to 25 minutes. The questionnaire we presented to our sample of voters was designed in the language mainly spoken in the respondents’ State. In Punjab it was in Punjabi, in Gujarat in Gujarati, in Kerala in Malayalam, etc. About 357 field investigators in total conducted the survey.

The achieved national sample is broadly representative of India’s population, in terms of the country's general demographic profile. It has nevertheless been weighted by gender, locality, caste group and religion in each State as per Census 2011 percentages. For our all-India analysis, we adjusted the figures using a statistical technique known as weighting, which means that each State was proportionately represented in the analysis.

The survey was designed and analysed by a team of researchers at Lokniti, CSDS. The team included Ananya Singh, Ankita Barthwal, Asmita Aasaavari, Dhananjay Kumar Singh, Himanshu Bhattacharya, Jyoti Mishra, Shreyas Sardesai and Vibha Attri. The survey was coordinated by scholars from the Lokniti Network: E Venkatesu and Srinivas Rao Gangiredla (Andhra Pradesh), Dhruba Pratim Sharma and Nurul Hassan (Assam), Rakesh Ranjan (Bihar), Anupama Saxena and Shamshad Ansari (Chhattisgarh), Biswajit Mohanty (Delhi), Mahashweta Jani (Gujarat), Kushal Pal and Anita Agarwal (Haryana), Harishwar Dayal and Amit Kumar (Jharkhand), Veenadevi (Karnataka), Sajad Ibrahim (Kerala), Yatindra Singh Sisodia and Ashish Bhatt (Madhya Pradesh), Nitin Birmal (Maharashtra), Gyanaranjan Swain (Odisha), Ashutosh Kumar and Hardeep Kaur (Punjab), Sanjay Lodha and Nidhi Seth (Rajasthan), P Ramajayam (Tamil Nadu), Vageeshan Harathi (Telangana), Mirza Asmer Beg, Shashikant Pandey and Shilpa Tripathi (Uttar Pradesh), and Suprio Basu (West Bengal). The survey was directed by Prof. Sanjay Kumar, Prof. Suhas Palshikar and Prof. Sandeep Shastri of Lokniti.

Download Marginals (Provisional)

Download Report  

Download Questionnaire