NATIONAL ELECTION STUDIES

The National Election Studies series attempts to go beyond the mere numbers of electoral politics so as to understand the larger forces and the long-term changes taking place in democratic politics and society. The most ambitious of these has been the National Election Study, 1996 - 99, a panel study involving six waves of survey of a national representative sample of about 15,000 Indian electors across three parliamentary elections that took place in this period. This is perhaps the largest panel study of its kind in any democracy. The most recent in the National Election series has been the National Election Study 2004 or NES 2004

The National Election Study 2004 (NES 2004)

The analysis of the national and State-level verdict of the 14th Lok Sabha Election draws upon a post-poll survey conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) as part of its National Election Studies. The NES 2004 is the largest and most comprehensive social scientific study of Indian elections. It adopts the best international practices to try and get the most realistic understanding of how the electorate behaves and feels about the key political issues of the moment. The findings of the NES 2004 have been reported in a special supplement of The Hindu dated May 20th, 2004. Read more about the National Election Study 2004: Methodology, Findings, The Big picture and State by state analysis (Find out more)

Note: For a list of all the National Election Studies that have been conducted (View Chart).
For information on how to get access to the survey data please check the CSDS Data Unit.