More on the TFT Iran Poll
Mark Blumenthal | June 17, 2009
Topics: Iran , Terror Free Tomorrow poll
Via Sullivan, a new op-ed from Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty that walks back a little from the nut graph of their original Washington Post op-ed that was the object of much criticism. On Monday they argued:
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.
Yesterday, on CNN, they qualified:
Our poll concluded three weeks before the election. It does not predict the final vote, nor does it measure a possible surge for Moussavi, which many believe occurred in the final weeks. Instead, as we wrote on Monday, our survey indicates "the possibility that the vote is not the product of widespread fraud" because of Ahmadinejad's formidable early lead.
More importantly, they also review some of the context provided other measures on their survey:
Nearly 80 percent want the right to vote for all their leaders, including the all-powerful supreme leader, while nearly 90 percent chose free elections and a free press as the most important goals they have for their government -- virtually tied with the top priority of improving the Iranian economy.
And here is the most important fact of all: More than 86 percent of those who told us they support Ahmadinejad also choose free elections and a free press as their most important priorities for their leaders. In other words, in our survey, Ahmadinejad supporters back real democratic reforms in Iran as much as supporters of the more avowedly reform candidate Moussavi.
Separately, Mark Mellman joins the chorus of critics of Monday's op-ed, but also makes a similar point about attitudes they measured that were not in sync with Ahmadinejad.
Whether or not "the reelection of President Ahmadinejad is what the Iranian people wanted," [the poll] demonstrates voters dissent from some, though not all, of his polices. In contrast to their candidate, strong majorities support rapprochement with the United States and the establishment of democratic institutions.
While a narrow 52 percent majority supports the development of nuclear weapons, 74 percent would have Iran guarantee not to develop nukes in exchange for trade and investment from abroad. other measures from the first survey:
Of course Mellman also notes some agreement:
[O]ne chilling statistic will send shivers up spines in Jerusalem and elsewhere. Just 27 percent of Iran's voters would favor a peace treaty with Israel if an independent Palestinian state is established, but 62 percent "oppose any peace treaty" and "favor all Muslims continuing to fight until there is no State of Israel in the Middle East." On that issue, Ahmadinejad seems to command a majority.
One reader emailed Monday asking me to urge the sponsors of the survey -- Terror Free Tomorrow (TFT) and the New America Foundation -- to release the raw, respondent level data from their survey in order to enable regional cross-tabulations of their vote preference question. Again, the three-week span between the completion of the survey and Election Day renders the data mostly useless as direct forensic evidence of voter fraud.
However, given that TFT is a non-profit with a stated mission of providing facts to help counter extremism, they would do a real public service by putting the machine-readable, respondent level data online right now. Access to that data would not prove or disprove fraud, but it would allow scholars to get a better understanding of the attitudes present among the Iranian citizenry just before their election campaign got underway in earnest.
P.S. Posting on Tehran Bureau, Muhammad Sahimi makes a similar argument about reform impulses in the Iranian public using the TFT data:
Let us begin with the American poll. According to the poll, 77% of the respondents said that they want the Supreme Leader to be elected directly by the people; 74% favor full inspections of Iran's nuclear facilities to ensure that it will not be used for non-peaceful purposes; 77% favor normal trade with, and full recognition by the United States; 68% favor Iran's government to help the U.S. in Iraq, and 52% favor recognition of Israel in return for U.S. recognition and open. trade. Who espouses such policies? The reformists, not President Ahmadinejad.
90% of the respondents thought that the economy should be the top priority of their government. How has Mr. Ahmadinejad's economic performance been (aside from distributing cash among the poor in the last month of the campaign)? Dismal! Unemployment, inflation, and the costs of housing, fuel, and food have all skyrocketed since 2005
By Mark Blumenthal | June 17, 2009 2:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
