A Blog by the Editor of The Middle East Journal

Putting Middle Eastern Events in Cultural and Historical Context

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Election Day: Shibley Telhami's Polls

Most of the Egyptian polls have looked a little strange. Yes, some showed Abu'l-Futuh and Moussa leading, but others seemed to go against what the conventional reading of public opinion suggests: pools showing Shafiq leading, or Hamdeen Sabahi doing very well. Some of this may be due to special interest push-polling; some conceivably is just due to the fact that there is no past performance to judge by. I won't say that Prof. Shibley Telhami's polls are automatically reliable, but he's got a track record of Arab world polling, which is more than many Egyptian news media and NGOs can say. So here's his take. Abu'l-Futuh getting a third of the vote and Moussa a strong second; the rest of the field trailing behind; the Brotherhood suffering from it's breaking its promise not to field a candidate. Is Telhami right? We'll know soon.
Full Survey Results Here

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Is there enough reasonable-quality information in the public domain about the population (e.g., detailed census or economic data) to do proper demographic weighting in a country like Egypt?