Intense or aggressive campaign in a sense is the key component in winning elections and what matters is how a party reaches its voters or sends its message to people, a Delhi-based think tank says in a survey.

Centre for the Study of Development Societies Director Sanjay Kumar shared results of the recent survey, "Election with a difference: Analysing the Verdict of Lok Sabha Elections 2014", at a views-exchange meeting in the capital's Centre for Policy Dialogue with select media and distinguished guests.

According to the survey, if there was a level playing field in polls campaign, Indian National Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) campaigned honestly and there was some formal platform to campaign, then Congress would not have done so badly and BJP would not have done so well.

Narendra Modi-led BJP captured 285

seats out of 543 seats of Lok Sabha while Sonia Gandhi-led Congress got 44 seats.

Sanjay said, "If we look at the proportionality in terms of the kind of failure. Congress registered in 2014 and their performance, this is a mismatch. Congress actually did not do as badly as they fared in the 2014 election.

"They failed miserably, got only 44 seats. Is this the right reflection of Congress Party's performance between 2009 and 2014.

"Yes, it's true that the United Progressive Alliance led by the Congress governed the country badly (2009-2014) but not as much bad as they did in the election."

So the big message is how best you can send your message to voters and that is the strategy - how well you can leave the message with the voters, he added.

"Congress did some very big, good jobs in their last tenure including health schemes, midday milk scheme and various other schemes but the message did not reach the people it was not carried out to party people before theelection,” he said.

So it is very important for any government or a political party to send its message to voters in the right way, he added.

Sanjay also said credibility of the top leader in a party was also a very big factor in winning elections. Bad candidates of a party often win in an election when people believe that an honest leader of that party is going to be the prime minister, he said.