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

[C. G. Estabrook]

http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenumbers/2009/06/irans-election-the-odds-of-fraud.html>

	Iran's Election: The Odds of Fraud
	[Gary Langer]
	June 15, 2009 11:36 AM

An outfit called Terror Free Tomorrow claims in an op-ed in today’s Washington
Post that the contested Iranian elections likely were not fraudulent, since a
pre-election poll it sponsored showed the declared winner, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
with a big lead.

TFT’s own data, though, tell a different story – as, oddly, did its own previous
polling analysis.

The poll, done by telephone last month, found 34 percent support for Ahmadinejad
vs. 14 percent for Mir Hossein Mousavi. The incumbent led by “a more than 2 to 1
margin – greater than his actual margin of apparent victory in Friday’s
election,” today’s op-ed says. “Our scientific sampling from across all 30 of
Iran’s provinces showed Ahmadinejad well ahead.”

Strange, then, that TFT’s analysis of these same data last month predicted a runoff.

The problem with both analyses is the vast number of respondents who declined to
answer the vote preference question at all. Fifty percent either said they had
no opinion (27 percent), refused to answer (15 percent) or favored “none” of the
candidates (8 percent) – higher levels of non-response than on any other
question in the survey.

To declare Ahmadinejad comfortably ahead based on these data is to assume that
the people who did not express a preference divided precisely the same as those
who did answer the question. This theoretical calculation produces a majority
for the incumbent. The question is whether such a calculation is justified – and
the reality is that even TFT did not make this leap in its pre-election analysis.

Rather it leaped in another direction, noting that “the race may actually be
closer than a first look at the numbers would indicate,” because more than six
in 10 respondents who expressed no opinion “reflect individuals who favor
political reform and change in the current system.” It went on to predict “that
none of the candidates will likely pass the 50 percent threshold.”

As today’s claim that this poll reliably indicated a large lead for the
incumbent is ill-supported, so is the previous analysis. We’re not told
precisely what informed the judgment that “more than 60 percent” of undecideds
looked like reformers, whether this included refusals as well as no-opinion
respondents, or how robust the conclusion may have been. Nor does today’s piece
explain the turnaround from the earlier evaluation.

TFT’s op-ed today defends its data by noting that respondents gave “politically
risky” responses to other questions, including that many “said they wanted to
change the political system to give them the right to elect Iran’s supreme
leader.” The phrase “change the political” system in fact was not part of that
question, leaving open the possibility of misinterpretation. More to the point,
though, is the level of non-response specifically in the vote-preference question.

A critical factor in the accuracy of pre-election polls is that they actually
measure voter preferences. There are many ways to encourage likely voters to
state a choice – simple steps such as encouraging respondents that their answers
are confidential and asking them which candidate they lean towards. The TFT
poll’s flaws are evident in the fact that half its respondents didn't express a
vote preference at all – a result that makes evaluation of its data in hindsight
a highly fraught exercise.

Robert Naiman wrote:
>> 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 _______________________________________________ 
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