This is the rebuttal of the poll you are relying on agha Reza by well respected Professor Juan Cole, read and enjoy :
Source:http://www.juancole.com/2009/06/terror-free-tomorro-poll-did-not.html
Monday, June 15, 2009
Terror Free Tomorrow Poll Did not Predict Ahmadinejad Win
Noting my skepticism about the announced outcome of Friday's presidential elections in Iran, readers have been asking me what I think about this WaPo op-ed by Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty pointing out that a scientifically weighted Project for a Terror Free Tomorrow poll in mid-May found Ahmadinejad beating Mir-Hosain Mousavi by a 2 to 1 margin.
I have enormous respect for Ballen, PFTFT and Doherty & the New America Foundation.
But as a mere social historian I would say that the poll actually tends to confirm some of my doubts about the announced electoral tallies.
The poll did not find that Ahmadinejad had majority support. It found that the level of support for the incumbent was 34%, with Mousavi at 14%.
27% said that they were undecided. (Some 22% of respondents are not accounted for by any of the 4 candidates or by the undecided category, and I cannot find an explanation for this. Did they plan to write in for other candidates? A little over a quarter of respondents did say they wanted more choice than they were being given. Update: Some of this 22% refused to answer, others said they did not like any of the candidates. Ahmadinejad is unlikely to have picked up the latter, and Mousavi supporters were more likely to refuse to answer.)
Here's the important point: 60% of the 27% who said they were undecided favored political reform. As Ballen wrote at that time:
If Ahmadinejad got all of the other 11% among undecideds, the race would have stood at 45% to 30%.
Ballen noted in May,
In fact, the regime has announced that Ahmadinejad received almost 63% of the vote. So while Ballen's polling does suggest that it was plausible that Ahmadinejad could have won a run-off election against Mousavi, it indicated that Ahmadinejad was unlikely to win a first round.
Moreover, given the PFTFT numbers, all of the undecideds would have had to vote for Ahmadinejad in order for him to get over 60% of the total vote. That outcome seems to me so statistically unlikely as to rate as an impossibility.
Note that the regime is not merely claiming that Ahmadinejad barely avoided a run-off by getting 51% of the vote. They are saying he received nearly two-thirds of the vote. No such outcome was predicted by the PFTFT poll-- quite the opposite.
So my commonsense, non-technical, historian's comment is that the poll may well have been sound, and Ballen's original conclusions may also have been. But the tenor of his WaPo article contradicts the poll in seeming to find a 63% margin of victory for Ahmadinejad plausible on the basis of it.
Particularly puzzling is that he seems to have forgotten his own observation that the race in May was closer than it seemed, since 60% of undecideds identified with reform principles.
Finally, 42% of respondents successfully contacted declined to answer the poll. Since it is much more likely that reformists would be afraid of government reprisal and afraid of talking about their politics than that Ahmadinejad supporters would be, the possibility that declines were disproportionately pro-Mousavi voters is strong. Although Ballen says voters were willing to answer controversial questions on press freedom or voting for the supreme leader, in fact these are vague and general issues. Imagine if a woman was pro-Mousavi and the phone rang when her husband, a pro-Ahmadinejad voter, was present. She might well just hang up rather than risk a domestic squabble. The decline rate strikes me as quite large, and of a sort that might well skew the results toward Ahmadinejad supporters.
Source:http://www.juancole.com/2009/06/terror-free-tomorro-poll-did-not.html
Monday, June 15, 2009
Terror Free Tomorrow Poll Did not Predict Ahmadinejad Win
Noting my skepticism about the announced outcome of Friday's presidential elections in Iran, readers have been asking me what I think about this WaPo op-ed by Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty pointing out that a scientifically weighted Project for a Terror Free Tomorrow poll in mid-May found Ahmadinejad beating Mir-Hosain Mousavi by a 2 to 1 margin.
I have enormous respect for Ballen, PFTFT and Doherty & the New America Foundation.
But as a mere social historian I would say that the poll actually tends to confirm some of my doubts about the announced electoral tallies.
The poll did not find that Ahmadinejad had majority support. It found that the level of support for the incumbent was 34%, with Mousavi at 14%.
27% said that they were undecided. (Some 22% of respondents are not accounted for by any of the 4 candidates or by the undecided category, and I cannot find an explanation for this. Did they plan to write in for other candidates? A little over a quarter of respondents did say they wanted more choice than they were being given. Update: Some of this 22% refused to answer, others said they did not like any of the candidates. Ahmadinejad is unlikely to have picked up the latter, and Mousavi supporters were more likely to refuse to answer.)
Here's the important point: 60% of the 27% who said they were undecided favored political reform. As Ballen wrote at that time:
' A close examination of our survey results reveals that the race may actually be closer than a first look at the numbers would indicate. More than 60 percent of those who state they don’t know who they will vote for in the Presidential elections reflect individuals who favor political reform and change in the current system.'
That is, supporters of the challenger's principles may not quite have committed to him at that point but were likely leaning to him on the basis of his platform. They were 16% of the sample. This finding suggests that in mid-May, Mousavi may have actually had 30% support.
If Ahmadinejad got all of the other 11% among undecideds, the race would have stood at 45% to 30%.
Ballen noted in May,
'The current mood indicates that none of the candidates will likely pass the 50 percent threshold needed to automatically win; meaning that a second round runoff between the two highest finishers, as things stand, Mr. Ahmadinejad and
Mr. Moussavi, is likely.'
That is, based on his polling, Ballen did not expect Ahmadinejad to get to 51%.Mr. Moussavi, is likely.'
In fact, the regime has announced that Ahmadinejad received almost 63% of the vote. So while Ballen's polling does suggest that it was plausible that Ahmadinejad could have won a run-off election against Mousavi, it indicated that Ahmadinejad was unlikely to win a first round.
Moreover, given the PFTFT numbers, all of the undecideds would have had to vote for Ahmadinejad in order for him to get over 60% of the total vote. That outcome seems to me so statistically unlikely as to rate as an impossibility.
Note that the regime is not merely claiming that Ahmadinejad barely avoided a run-off by getting 51% of the vote. They are saying he received nearly two-thirds of the vote. No such outcome was predicted by the PFTFT poll-- quite the opposite.
So my commonsense, non-technical, historian's comment is that the poll may well have been sound, and Ballen's original conclusions may also have been. But the tenor of his WaPo article contradicts the poll in seeming to find a 63% margin of victory for Ahmadinejad plausible on the basis of it.
Particularly puzzling is that he seems to have forgotten his own observation that the race in May was closer than it seemed, since 60% of undecideds identified with reform principles.
Finally, 42% of respondents successfully contacted declined to answer the poll. Since it is much more likely that reformists would be afraid of government reprisal and afraid of talking about their politics than that Ahmadinejad supporters would be, the possibility that declines were disproportionately pro-Mousavi voters is strong. Although Ballen says voters were willing to answer controversial questions on press freedom or voting for the supreme leader, in fact these are vague and general issues. Imagine if a woman was pro-Mousavi and the phone rang when her husband, a pro-Ahmadinejad voter, was present. She might well just hang up rather than risk a domestic squabble. The decline rate strikes me as quite large, and of a sort that might well skew the results toward Ahmadinejad supporters.
With regard to the 60% of the "undecided" being pro-reform, lets just admit two things: first, Mousavi would not have gotten 13+ million votes if he didn't get a bulk of these people. Otherwise, he started with only 6 million voters (14%) in this poll. Second, while there are people who favor reforms who might Ahmadinejad a more credible vehicle for the reforms they care about most than the coalition against him, the other 40% of the undecided who did not fall in that category would themselves number around 5 million. Just that 5 million plus the 16 million committed Ahmadinejad supporters from this poll would give him a majority.
Finally, those who refused to answer would actually include many more Ahmadinejad supporters than vice versa. The poll showed that 90% of those who did answer favored direct elections for Supreme Leader, so obviously most respondents were not shy about talking about the most taboo subjects here. But there are many simple minded and less educated people in Iran, from rural places and such, who support Ahmadinejad overwhelmingly but who are much more likely not to be vocal or articulate in their viewpoints and quite shy in expressing it.
Anway, the best way to resolve the issue is too look forward to a new poll by an internationally recognized polster with no biases for either side. This poll would ask how everyone actually voted.