[Peace-discuss] WPost TFT/NAF op-ed: The Iranian People Speak

[Robert Naiman]

>From today's Washington Post, an op-ed by the sponsors of the poll I
cited yesterday.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/14/AR2009061401757_pf.html

The Iranian People Speak

By Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty
Monday, June 15, 2009

The election results in Iran may reflect the will of the Iranian
people. Many experts are claiming that the margin of victory of
incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the result of fraud or
manipulation, but our nationwide public opinion survey of Iranians
three weeks before the vote showed Ahmadinejad leading by a more than
2 to 1 margin -- greater than his actual apparent margin of victory in
Friday's election.

While Western news reports from Tehran in the days leading up to the
voting portrayed an Iranian public enthusiastic about Ahmadinejad's
principal opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi, our scientific sampling from
across all 30 of Iran's provinces showed Ahmadinejad well ahead.

Independent and uncensored nationwide surveys of Iran are rare.
Typically, preelection polls there are either conducted or monitored
by the government and are notoriously untrustworthy. By contrast, the
poll undertaken by our nonprofit organizations from May 11 to May 20
was the third in a series over the past two years. Conducted by
telephone from a neighboring country, field work was carried out in
Farsi by a polling company whose work in the region for ABC News and
the BBC has received an Emmy award. Our polling was funded by the
Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

The breadth of Ahmadinejad's support was apparent in our preelection
survey. During the campaign, for instance, Mousavi emphasized his
identity as an Azeri, the second-largest ethnic group in Iran after
Persians, to woo Azeri voters. Our survey indicated, though, that
Azeris favored Ahmadinejad by 2 to 1 over Mousavi.

Much commentary has portrayed Iranian youth and the Internet as
harbingers of change in this election. But our poll found that only a
third of Iranians even have access to the Internet, while
18-to-24-year-olds comprised the strongest voting bloc for Ahmadinejad
of all age groups.

The only demographic groups in which our survey found Mousavi leading
or competitive with Ahmadinejad were university students and
graduates, and the highest-income Iranians. When our poll was taken,
almost a third of Iranians were also still undecided. Yet the baseline
distributions we found then mirror the results reported by the Iranian
authorities, indicating the possibility that the vote is not the
product of widespread fraud.

Some might argue that the professed support for Ahmadinejad we found
simply reflected fearful respondents' reluctance to provide honest
answers to pollsters. Yet the integrity of our results is confirmed by
the politically risky responses Iranians were willing to give to a
host of questions. For instance, nearly four in five Iranians --
including most Ahmadinejad supporters -- said they wanted to change
the political system to give them the right to elect Iran's supreme
leader, who is not currently subject to popular vote. Similarly,
Iranians chose free elections and a free press as their most important
priorities for their government, virtually tied with improving the
national economy. These were hardly "politically correct" responses to
voice publicly in a largely authoritarian society.

Indeed, and consistently among all three of our surveys over the past
two years, more than 70 percent of Iranians also expressed support for
providing full access to weapons inspectors and a guarantee that Iran
will not develop or possess nuclear weapons, in return for outside aid
and investment. And 77 percent of Iranians favored normal relations
and trade with the United States, another result consistent with our
previous findings.

Iranians view their support for a more democratic system, with normal
relations with the United States, as consonant with their support for
Ahmadinejad. They do not want him to continue his hard-line policies.
Rather, Iranians apparently see Ahmadinejad as their toughest
negotiator, the person best positioned to bring home a favorable deal
-- rather like a Persian Nixon going to China.

Allegations of fraud and electoral manipulation will serve to further
isolate Iran and are likely to increase its belligerence and
intransigence against the outside world. Before other countries,
including the United States, jump to the conclusion that the Iranian
presidential elections were fraudulent, with the grave consequences
such charges could bring, they should consider all independent
information. The fact may simply be that the reelection of President
Ahmadinejad is what the Iranian people wanted.

Ken Ballen is president of Terror Free Tomorrow: The Center for Public
Opinion, a nonprofit institute that researches attitudes toward
extremism. Patrick Doherty is deputy director of the American Strategy
Program at the New America Foundation. The groups' May 11-20 polling
consisted of 1,001 interviews across Iran and had a 3.1 percentage
point margin of error.

--
Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org