Our mind has an algorithm that works just like the way the social media algorithm works. Let’s say you have decided to buy a particular car. Suddenly, on the road, you see only that very model that you thought of buying. Or say, you were thinking of buying an indigo dress. Even though it is the rarest colour, you suddenly begin to see indigo everywhere.
Social media is designed on the same approach. It systematically feeds our bias. It tells us what we believe to be true. It shows us what we want to see. This assures us. We do not want to be proven wrong. We want to be proven right.
Last year, we launched BangladeshSpeaks.com, a micro-polling site, to assess the public pulse on national issues. We followed it up by launching our flagship People’s Election Pulse Survey. As researchers, we are trained to understand systematic biases. We design the research method to address the bias and see the ground truth.
Our data repeatedly revealed that Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh has a voting base that is much larger than what the urban educated and elite society thought. In the last Eid-ul-Adha, I was visiting Chittagong, my hometown. One of my grandparents, an acute political observer and a veteran citizen, asked, how is it possible that our survey is showing such a big surge for Jamaat. According to him, it is impossible. Based on historic knowledge and discussion around his own circle, which, as I explained earlier, is designed to feed the bias, my grandparent came to the conclusion that this is an improbability.
Our People’s Election Pulse Survey, March, 2024 showed that at the national level, 35.5% of the Gen Zs who revealed their voting preference would vote for BNP while 34.2% of the GenZs who revealed their voting preference would vote for Jamaat. Statistical margin of error means that there is no significant difference between the two.
We saw that the voting base for BNP increases as the age of the voter increases but it starts to decline once the voter’s age crosses 60. On the other hand, Jamaat’s popularity with voters declines with the increase in age but shows a slight rise once the voter’s age crosses 60.
It is altogether a different discussion as to why there is a surge in the voting base for Jamaat. That requires different research. I might have a hypothesis backed by some empirical evidence. But as a researcher, I do not want to delve into a discussion or a debate for what I do not have robust evidence. For now, our evidence is that there is a surge in the voting base for Jamaat. The Ducsu and Jucsu election showed that our findings were not erratic.
However, here too, people close to me asked: “But your data does not predict a landslide for Shibir, the student faction of Jamaat.”
Now, the election of a student union is an entirely different topic than a national election. A survey that is designed to assess the voter’s preference for national election can at best pick a direction but cannot predict results for a student union election. Similarly, a student union election can at best show the direction that we might see in national elections but cannot predict outcomes.
But there is a catch. There is a channel through which the student election outcome can influence the national election outcome and we already have all the signs that the process has started and Jamaat and Shibir barely had to do anything other than winning these two student union elections.
Since the Ducsu and Jucsu elections, social media has gone wild in analyzing why Shibir has fared so well. Suddenly, those that brushed off any chance for Jamaat winning a strong number of constituencies in the next election have started to see that. Their previous bias has now caused another bias without subjective evidence.
The media who were questioning survey results even a couple of weeks back are now forecasting change in favour of Jamaat. At the time I was writing this piece, I came across this news that the business leaders have met the leader of Jamaat to discuss economics and business priorities. This shows that the inertia to engage with Jamaat is gone. The resistance to accepting Jamaat and Shibir’s gain as a significant political party in Bangladesh since August 5, 2024 is now shaken.
This now will open a floodgate of opportunistic leaders and investors to bet on Jamaat. On the other hand, there is a risk that BNP, which so far was rejecting any claim to the rise of Jamaat, will now overplay Jamaat. That will only work in favour of the latter. The Ducsu and Jucsu wins, as it stands now, are significant outcomes in favour of Jamaat to bolster its position for the national election.
I grew up in the compound of Chittagong College in the 90s when it was a strong base of Shibir. Chittagong University was a traditionally strong base for Shibir at the same time. We all remember how strong Shibir was in Rajshahi University. But those bases barely affected national election outcomes. It is because those were seen as isolated from the national election. As such, Shibir’s comfortable position in universities did not translate to voting outcomes for Jamaat.
In the current context, the social media activists along with the secular mass and business people in general, in their goodwill or fear, have triggered a natural experiment that in all likelihood might go in favour of Jamaat.
But how big will that effect be? I will wait for my research to tell in the months to come.
Md Rubaiyath Sarwar is Managing Director, Innovision Consulting.
