Stubborn or susceptible, what are we?

All opinion and exit polls totally failed to predict the trouncing of the BJP in Bihar assembly elections last month. Pundits are now trying to make sense of how they missed such a swing against the BJP. One article says that the reason why the polls were so wrong is because people make up their minds first and then look for corroborative evidence. A British politician apparently said," I will look at any additional evidence to confirm the opinion to which I have already come." This trait in humans is used by companies such as Facebook, which gives a list of people that you may like, or Amazon, which suggests what books you may like to read, by keeping a record of what you have ordered before. That is probably why politicians surround themselves with sycophants and board of directors of companies are filled with friends of the CEO. The internet has also been blamed for an apparent rise in intolerance because it gives a chance for people with similar views, but living far away from each other, to meet in chat rooms, whereas previously they would have been unaware of the existence of each other. This tendency of using the same facts to fit diametrically opposite opinions has been explained mathematically by using Bayes' Theorem. But are human beings so pig-headed that they are completely deaf to any other opinion. If that were the case the advertising industry would not be worth $600 billion worldwide. Lifebuoy's advertisements linking its soap with health, Liril soap's commercial of a girl under a waterfall and Maggi noodles advertising tasty hot noodles ready in 2 minutes are legendary. Anchor changed the way everything is sold in India by being the first to market a 'vegetarian toothpaste' so that now food, medicines and cosmetics are marked either with a green square for using vegetarian ingredients or a brown square for animal sources. The cosmetic industry, plastic surgery for cosmetic reasons and the organic food industries earn hundreds of billions of dollars, mostly from flimflam. So human beings are stubborn and highly suggestible in equal mixture. What decides elections, especially in India, has more to do with calculation of personal gain than with principles, patriotism or social development. In Bihar a combination of extreme anti-Hindu propaganda by a biased media, an appeal for caste alliance and promises of handouts tilted people towards the anti-BJP alliance. Polls were not wrong in that both sides were still equally balanced going into election day. In a first-past-the-post system any booth capturing, wherein thugs tell people which party to vote for, will result in a clean sweep. If one party has received 80-90% of all votes caste at a booth then that would be highly suspicious. Perhaps, professors should study voting patterns instead of using Bayes' Theorem. Beware of thugs though.