January Elections in Iraq? 141
bettiwettiwoo writes "Last week Kofi Annan claimed, in a BBC interview, that: 'You cannot have credible elections [in Iraq] if the security conditions continue as they are now.' Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi disagreed ('pointedly disagreed', according to the International Herald Tribune):'We definitely are going to stick to the timetable of elections in January ... Democracy is going to prevail and is going to win in Iraq.' According to Tony Blair: 'The people who are trying to stop that Iraq coming about, who are engaged in killing, maiming and acts of terrorism, are people who are opposed... to every single one of the values that we in countries like this hold dear.' Iraq the Model points to an IRI poll which states: 'In a stunning display of support for democracy and a strong rebuttal to critics of efforts to bring democratic reform to Iraq, 87% of Iraqis indicated that they plan to vote in January elections. Expanding on the theme, 77% said that "regular, fair elections" were the most important political right for the Iraqi people and 58% felt that Iraqi-style democracy was likely to succeed.' It would appear that the poll was undertaken sometime in July/August this year, but if such a large majority of the Iraqi population continues to favour elections, would it really be fair to the Iraqis to postpone the January elections whatever the security situation and whomever might be against them?"
Re:87% of whom? (Score:1, Interesting)
Absolutely unreal, and yet further evidence that programming requires no intelligence.
Re:Absolutely unrealistic (Score:4, Interesting)
Iraq's economy is actually stronger now than under Saddam.
More cities have electricity now than under Saddam.
There are several thousand foreign workers in Iraq. Less than 20 have been abducted. That's not terribly commonplace.
Out of hundreds of Iraqi cities, three are causing problems, and only one, Fallujah, which was a Saddam stronghold is the site of continued on-going military action.
The interim government is not resented by the general populace as evidenced by large numbers of iraqis signing up to be police in the new government and by the fact that the insurgents are targeting the interim government infrastructure more and more frequently. They would not do this unless they saw the interim government as effective and a threat to their goals of de-stablilzing the country.
There are something like thirty different newspapers all through Iraq publishing widely different political viewpoints. As long as they don't call for riots and assassinations, they are allowed to operate (calling for riots and assassinations will get your paper shut down in any European democracy as well. Heck, calling a Muslim a scarf-wearing terrorist will get you hauled to court in France).
Schools are opening all over Iraq where they were once closed.
Iraq is not as safe as, say, downtown Singapore, but it's a whole lot safer than downtown Washington D.C. or Mexico City.
Re:87% of whom? (Score:2, Interesting)
- Tone of voice, if the question and/or choices are read to the participant (pollee, if you will).
- Phrasing of the question and/or choices.
- Number of people asked. I forget the way it's figured, but one has to ask a certain number of people at a minimum, to make a poll statistically accurate.
- Bias of those asked. As you pointed out, one is going to get a decisive result in a particular direction, if the only people asked are those biased to support the desired outcome of the poll.
- The honesty of the person answering the question(s).
I've seen a few polls that, based on the question and the way the choices were phrased, seemed biased, and the group asking the question in one particular "exit poll" (a local ABC affiliate, if I remember correctly) seemed to be fishing for a particular result. I didn't like it at all, and promptly put the questionaire down.