ADR-Daksh Survey Report for Orissa region

The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) has conducted the largest ever survey in India with over 250,000 respondents in 530 Lok Sabha constituencies. The larger purpose of the survey is to highlight voter priorities so that elections in future are fought on voter issues, and more importantly, the manifestos of future Governments reflect voter priorities.

In Orissa, the purpose of the survey was multi-fold:

1. To Rate MPs from the state on a Scale of 10
2. To know Top 10 pressing issues for voters in the state
3. To know voting behaviour of people
4. To know what is the role of caste, religion, crime and money power in elections

The findings of the survey:

Rating of MPs: The voters have rated the performance of MPs as Good, Average or Bad on governance issues like employment, water, electricity, roads, food, education and health.

The average performance rating of 21 MPs from Orissais 5.93 on a scale of 10. Only twoMPs from Orissa haveperformed above average (Average Value of Performance = 6.67 points).

The highest scoring MP from Orissa is Prasanna Kumar Patasani of BJD fromBhubaneswar constituency with 7.95 points(Above average). On 2nd position is Pinaki Misra of BJDfromPuriconstituency with 7.60 points(Above average)and on the 3rd positionYashbanta Narayan Singh Laguri of BJDfrom Keonjhar constituency with 6.61 points.The lowest scoring MP fromOrissa is Mohan Jenaof BJDfromJajpurconstituency with4.49rating.

The survey has also tried to identify the gap between voters' expectations on governance issues and performance of MPs on those issues. If the expectation of voters score is more than the performance score it means voters are unhappy. And if expectation of voters score is less than the performance of MPs then voters are actually happy. 
Only 2MPs from Orissahave exceeded the expectation of people.

Please see the Table I (A) for individual performance rating of all the MPs from Orissa.(While 'Performance of MP' column shows the actual rating of MPs, the 'Expectations of voters on Governance issues' column shows people's expectations from their MPs on a scale of 10) Table I (B)is the graphical representation of 'Performance Ratings of MPs by Voters on Important Issues'.

Top 10 pressing issues for voters. To identify what are voter priorities in terms of governance issues like water, electricity, roads, food, education and health, a list of 30 items was given to voters and they were asked to rate whether a particular issue was High, Medium, or Low. This list was comprehensive as less than 5% said that there were "other issues" beyond the list.

In Orissa, Drinking Water, Better Roads and Better Hospitals/ Primary Healthcare Centres are the Top 3 issues about which people are most concerned.

Please see Table II to know the overall 10 most pressing issues for the people of Orissa which they want their MPs to focus on, Table III for top 10 issues in rural areas of the state andTable IV to know top 10 issues in urban areas.

Table –I (A)

Table –I (B)

Overall Top 10 issues for Orissa:

Table –II (A)

Table –II (B)

Table –II (C)

Top 10 issues in Rural areas:

Table –III (A)

Table –III (B)

Table –III (C)

Top 10 issues in Urban areas:

Table –IV (A)

Table –IV (B)

Table –IV (C)

The voting behavior of people in Orissa

The survey tried to identify the important factors that people take into account before voting for a particular Candidate. Issue like whether the Candidate matters the most or his Political Party or other issues like Caste/Religion of the Candidate, PM Candidate of the party, and Distribution of 'gifts' etc. are more important? 

People in Orissa gave more importance to the Party than the Candidate, followed by the PM candidatefrom the party and then the Caste/Religionof the candidate.

Role of caste, religion, crime and money power in elections.  
The survey also tried to identify if voters are aware of the use of money and muscle power in elections. Specifically, whether they are aware of distribution of gifts and money by candidates before polls or they have the knowledge about the criminal record of their candidates.

It was observed that nearly 70 per centof people in Orissa is well aware that distribution of gifts and money by candidates ahead of elections is illegal. However, only 26 per centpeople knew that they can get an information about the criminal records of their candidates easily.

What is also observed that over 67 per centpeople in Orissais ready to ignore the criminal record of their candidates because they feel such candidates have done "good work."Whereas around 30per cent of people vote for candidates facing criminal charges because they were of their own Caste/ Religion.

Please see the Table V to find out important factors which people consider before voting for a candidate and what weightage (points) they give to each of the factors:

Table –V (A)

Table –V (B)

Table –V (C)

Table –V (D)