The poll battlefield in Karnataka is wide open and as the Election Commission rang the poll bell on Wednesday none of the three major political parties vying for power in the state seems to enjoy any distinctively perceivable advantage at the outset of the election race, according to leading psephologists.
The first take of psephologists is each of the three contenders for power – the Congress, JD(S) and BJP – could be waging its own battle to convince the wary Karnataka voter. The Congress is up against the voters’ anger over price rise – seemingly price rise is the single most dominant issue, say GVL Narasimha Rao of the Development and Research Services. 
If the Congress has to defend itself on the inflation issue, former prime minister H D Deve Gowda’s JD(S) could be compelled to come clean with the voter who apparently believes that the party was a factor of instability during the life of the dissolved assembly, according to Yashwant Deshmukh of C-Voter.
Deshmukh, whose C-Voter has done several survey in past elections all over the country, finds that the BJP was yet to convince the voter that it can provide a credible alternative in the state.
Much as the party might have had perceived advantage of over the other two parties until a few weeks ago, Deshmukh as well as Rao reckon that the battle ground was an open one with no frontrunner at the start of the race.
Both Deshmukh and Rao also sought to dispel a belief in political circles that the BSP wildcard in the battle could only damage the Congress prospects. While much would depend on the kind of candidates the BSP would field, the pollsters said that their past findings had shown that Mayawati’s party can harm the prospects of other parties in the contest as much as it can harm that of the Congress. Thus, at the very outset of the battle it would erroneous to conclude that the BSP card would swing the balance in for or against any of the three major contestants, they believe.
But in general the psephologists, who have been at the receiving end of criticisms for their far-off-the-mark predictions in some past elections, are a cautious lot as they head for Karnataka in the coming weeks.
Besides the two psephologists, Yogendra Yadav of the Delhi-based Centre for the Study of Developing Societies admitted that psephological predictions in the forthcoming state assembly elections would be a far more challenging task. The reason is that Karnataka is the first state to go to polls under the newly delimited constituencies. In India constituencies have not been delimited since psephologists started doing serious poll surveys in the mid-1980s. The last time the constituencies were delimited was over 30 years ago in the midst 1970s. 
For one, when seat projections for different parties are made, psephologists use data from past elections as a basis for seat projections. Not having past data would pose a serious challenge for making seat forecasts, said Yadav who is already at work to deal with the new situation. Deshmukh said psephologists would have to cover as many of the 224 newly delimited assembly constituencies as possible to be in any position to make credible seat projections based on the vote percentages they would get from the sample surveys.