Pre-election polls in Iraq

Omar at Iraq the Model looks at the polls.

The results of a public opinion pool conducted in Babil province showed some interesting findings; the poll conducted by al-Mada research institute interviewed 460 men and women in a random sample technique from both the urban and rural parts of the province.

When asked if they were going to vote or not, 96.7% answered with “yes” while in only 3.3% of the cases the answer came as “no”.

When asked which list they’re going to vote for, 41.6% said they’ll be voting for the United Iraqi Alliance, second came Allawi’s “731 list” with 24.6% while all the rest of lists shared 15.5% of the votes in the poll.

The remaining 13.8% said they hadn’t made up their minds yet, something not unusual if we know most people know very little about the lists’ they’re supposed to chose from.

This poll showed that 77% of the interviewed people knew only the head of the list (24.8%) or a few more members of their favorite list (52.2%).

Read it here.

It's that last figure that interests me. Almost none of the candidates are known to the voters. This is what happens when parties are created from the top down.