Full methodology behind the Kautilya Political Popularity Index
The Kautilya Political Popularity Index (PPI) is a proprietary ranking system developed by Kautilya World to measure and track the real-time popularity and public influence of Indian politicians, media personalities, and social media influencers in the political space.
The PPI produces a composite score on a scale of 0-100 and is updated on the first week of every month. Rankings are published across three geographic tiers — National (India), and State-level (currently Bihar and Assam) — and three categories: Most Popular Politician, Most Popular Media Person, and Most Popular Social Media Person.
The PPI composite score is calculated from five key data pillars:
Follower growth rate, post engagement (likes, shares, comments), reach, virality index, and platform-specific metrics across X (Twitter), Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Koo.
AI-powered analysis of 500+ national and regional news sources. Measures positive/negative/neutral sentiment ratio, headline prominence, and editorial coverage frequency.
Monthly telephonic and field surveys conducted across 10,000+ respondents. Covers name recognition, approval rating, trust index, and issue association.
Search volume trends, related query analysis, geographic interest distribution, and trending topic association from Google Trends data.
Kautilya World's proprietary AI model that synthesizes all data streams, adjusts for recency bias, seasonal patterns, and produces the final normalized score.
The final PPI score is calculated as:
PPI = (0.30 x S) + (0.25 x N) + (0.20 x G) + (0.15 x T) + (0.10 x A)
Where S = Social Media Score, N = News Sentiment Score, G = Ground Survey Score, T = Google Trends Score, A = AI Perception Score. Each component is independently normalized to a 0-100 scale before weighting.
Includes elected representatives (MPs, MLAs, Ministers) and senior party officials. Eligibility: Must hold or have recently held an elected position or be a nationally/state-recognized party leader.
Includes TV news anchors, editors, print journalists, and media house heads who actively cover Indian politics. Eligibility: Must be actively working in mainstream media.
Includes politicians, commentators, YouTubers, and influencers whose primary political influence is via social media platforms. Eligibility: Must have 100K+ followers on at least one platform and regularly post political content.
Additional state-level rankings will be added as Kautilya World expands its operations.
The change indicator (shown as +/- next to each score) represents the point change from the previous month's PPI score. A positive change indicates growing popularity, while a negative change indicates declining public perception.
The Kautilya Political Popularity Index is an independent analytical exercise conducted by Kautilya World for informational and research purposes. Rankings do not imply endorsement, affiliation, or recommendation of any political leader, media person, or party. The methodology is proprietary and the scores are indicative of public perception trends, not absolute measures of political effectiveness or competence.
For questions about the PPI methodology, contact enquiry@kautilya.world