Title: Prime time news coverage and electoral harvest - a study of 2014 Indian general election

Authors: Md. Safiullah

Addresses: CMS Business School, Jain (Deemed-to-be University), Bengaluru, Karnataka 560009,India

Abstract: Politicians, political scientists, and journalists alike always discussed the use of news media during elections for voter's manipulations. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the hypothesis that the more a particular free media (news media) outlet cover election campaign of the political parties on the prime time news slot the more likely that parties will get more votes. In other words, political parties with the highest media coverage will get more votes in elections. For this research, a total of 2,65,560 prime time news seconds for 72 days from 1st March to 11th May 2014 of ten Indian political parties were considered. Regression analysis technique for data analysis with root mean square error is applied. The result indicates that election campaign coverage on prime time news has a positive and significant impact on parties vote gain during the 2014 Indian general elections.

Keywords: electronic media; election campaign; Indian politics; election prediction; prime time news; political marketing; India.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBFMI.2019.105343

International Journal of Business Forecasting and Marketing Intelligence, 2019 Vol.5 No.4, pp.424 - 432

Received: 05 Jul 2019
Accepted: 24 Aug 2019
Published online: 24 Feb 2020 *

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