This piece is a response to the article published in the Washington Post on June 15th 2009 entitled “The Iranian People Speak” by Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty. In this article, the authors claim that Ahmadinejad’s’ victory on Friday’s election can be seen as a genuine demonstration of the will of the Iranian people, a victory that also reflects the results of a survey the authors themselves conducted. The authors assert that based on the results of a survey they conducted between May 11th and May 20th, there remains the strong possibility that Ahmadinejad’s victory occurred without fraud or manipulation. The conclusions made in this article, however, are based on a survey whose content and internal validity are highly questionable. Additionally, some extremely important nuances that are critical to understanding both Iranian political culture and the reasoning for the survey responses are absent in the authors’ analysis of the survey results.
I am certainly not the first to question the results of this poll. Gary Langer of ABC News, Karlyn Bowman at the Enterprise Blog, and Andrew Sullivan at The Daily Dish have all expressed skepticism about the results of this poll.
The poll was conducted between May 11th and 20th. Those who intended to run in the Iranian election registered in February 2009. Those who registered could not start campaigning, however, prior to approval from the Guardian Council, an appointed and constitutionally-mandated council that is charged with supervising elections and approving candidates for the Presidency. The Guardian Council announced the approval of the candidates on May 20th. Campaigning that occurred before that date was, according to the constitution, illegal. Therefore before that date, many did not even know whether Mousavi was an authorized candidate.
Juan Cole over at “Informed Comment” notes the fuzziness of the numbers in the polling data. The poll results indicate that Ahmadinejad would have 34% of the vote and Mousavi would have 14%. The election results indicating that Ahmadinejad won 63% of the vote is not reflected in this poll. Additionally the vast majority of the 27% who were undecided in the poll were reformist supporters. This suggests that, once decided, they would have supported Mosavi and increased his proportion of votes.
There are several reasons that the internal validity of this survey is questionable. First, this survey was conducted via landline telephones from an unspecified neighboring country. Most Iranians would be extremely reluctant to reply honestly over the phone. The belief that “big brother is watching you” is strong in Iran. Most Iranians live under the constant fear that the government monitors phone calls, and it would have been impossible for any of the survey subjects to verify the pollsters’ independence from any government entity.
Furthermore, as the largest employer in Iran, the government pays the majority of Iranians’ salaries. Respondents to this survey would certainly hesitate to answer honestly if they believed that candid responses could put their livelihoods in jeopardy. Despite the presence of reformist candidates on the official ballot, many Iranians believe that publicly disclosing support for reformist candidates could endanger them in the event that, once in office, the administration purges the State of opposition supporters.
The findings of the survey indicate that Mousavi’s supporters were limited to university students. But what the authors fail to mention is that, in Iran, university students are among the most highly respected and influential members of the family unit. Family members of university students often vote according to the views of the student. Data indicates that over 3 million Iranians are university students. If, as their survey indicates, Mosavi had had only the support of university students and their families, then the result of the election would still have shown a much higher percentage of votes for Mosavi.
The authors do attempt to mitigate concerns that pro-Ahmadinejad responses arose from fear or reluctance to answer honestly by pointing to “politically risky responses” given to other survey questions. The authors highlight the overwhelming number of subjects who responded affirmatively when asked if they thought that the Supreme Leader should be an elected office. This is an ideal that stems from the reformist movement, so the response to this question may reflect reformists’ aspirations to have more (if not most) power allocated to the President. Democratic values such as free elections and freedom of the press also have heavy support among those polled. Yet freedom of the press and free elections are ideals supported by most Iranians, even those hardliners who attempt to undermine these values even as they expressly support them.
Some of the core assumptions about Iranian society in the poll are inaccurate. For instance, the pollsters asked people if they pray five times a day. However it is the Sunni denominations of Islam that pray five times a day and the overwhelming majority of Iranians belong to Shiite denominations, which pray only three times a day. Why would 80.6% of respondents indicate that they do indeed pray five times a day when the vast majority of Iranians pray only 3 times a day? This demonstrates a lack of attention on the part of the respondents.
Another discrepancy is evident in the responses to the survey question about relations with the U.S. The authors conclude that most respondents desire to have normal relations with the U.S. However having this desire does not coincide with supporting Ahmadinejad. The only candidate who outwardly supported normalized relations with the U.S. was Mosavi. It is unlikely that most respondents both desired this change and supported someone other than Mosavi.
The authors cannot assert the authenticity of the election based solely on the results of this survey. It is misleading in terms of both the methodology of the survey and the analysis of the survey results. Such a misleading survey is troublesome for the U.S. public and, particularly, for the administration. If we are to base any policies on this analysis, for instance, we will run into the possibility of repeating past mistakes. Historically speaking, the US’s poor understanding of Iran has resulted in a number of policies that have had a devastating impact on both the citizenry and the democratic development of the country. For example, the 1953 US-led coup caused the overthrow of a democratic government, the covert operations during the 1979 revolution led to a hostage crisis, and the increase in the level and amount of sanctions on Iran during the reformist government of the late 90s and early 2000s left the reformist administration without Western help to contend with the conservatives.
I believe the first responsibility of the authors of this article is to reevaluate their findings based on the realities of Iranian society rather than on a survey with a relatively small sample.
For up-to-the-minute events surrounding the Iran election, check the New York Times blog here.
