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WAR POLLS AT WAR
Conflicting polls out of Iraq; first, the BBC reports:
A new survey paints a pessimistic picture of Iraqis’ confidence in their own government and in coalition forces.
Only 18% of Iraqis have confidence in US and coalition troops, while opinion is almost evenly split on whether to have confidence in Iraq’s government.
About 86% of those questioned expressed concern about someone in their household being a victim of violence.
But from the Times:
Most Iraqis believe life is better for them now than it was under Saddam Hussein, according to a British opinion poll ...
The survey of more than 5,000 Iraqis found the majority optimistic despite their suffering in sectarian violence since the American-led invasion four years ago this week.
One in four Iraqis has had a family member murdered, says the poll ... But when asked whether they preferred life under Saddam, the dictator who was executed last December, or under Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, most replied that things were better for them today.
Having read the story in today’s Oz here, it was hard to credit that the BBC’s website was reporting about the results of the same survey.
Melanie Phillips, as usual, is spot on about Auntie’s big sister.I fear all is lost for the Poms.
We had a protest outside the FL Capital yesterday. I started to give unidigital salutes when I saw all the pink ribbons. Turns out Code Pink was involved. Which makes me feel better, because I thought I was flipping off just the Buddhists (who had the only sign up) for a while.
And I’d've felt guilty about flipping off people who are at least consistent, if wrong, in their opposition to violence.
I know it wasn’t exactly the “crushing of dissent” that the Left has come to expect, but it was a beautiful day and I had yardwork to do. Also, I really didn’t want to get close enough to find out if any of the 8-10 protestors participate in a bathing optional lifestyle.
To be perfectly fair, the numbers of Iraqis who do not think they are better off now than they were under Saddam should be bolstered by those murdered by terrorists in the years of the war, (less those who would expectedly be killed under Saddam, had he stayed).
Saddam sure sucked, but if the dead could take polls, they would probably say - “I’d rather not have been blown up while buying figs at the market.”
Posted by AspiringJewrist on 2007 03 19 at 09:13 AM • permalinkrb - I agree - and I explicitly note that in my comment. Saddam was a terrible mass murderer. I believe that over the next 20-30 years, the number of Iraqis killed will be much less than it would have been had he stayed. That’s probably not the case in the short term though, unfortunately. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be there. It just means the polls are skewed a bit, whether I like it or not.
Posted by AspiringJewrist on 2007 03 19 at 09:18 AM • permalinkSo who here thinks there’s any real validity to any form of opinion polling in a country that overnight went from an oppressive regime where you dared not speak your mind to the opposite? There’s no basis for expressing yourself normally; like a teenager, you suddenly find you can say anything, except maybe you can’t, and in any case you have no practice in exercising good judgement about it. They’re just not the same as, say, Vermonters when it comes to handling these kinds of situations.
The polls don’t really conflict. Both find majorities saying life is better since the invasion.
“Confidence” is a tricky thing. When the U.S. invaded, Iraqis expected the Americans to solve all their problems; this is the mentality a citizenry develops under a socialist police state. Our troops report their biggest challenge has been getting Iraqis to do things themselves and take ownership of issues.
So this is progress of a sort: Iraqis now expect more from Iraqi institutions than from American troops.
It’s random sampling. Say you want to find out what percentage of a cat is teeth. You poke it randomly with a pin, and record the fraction of the time you hit teeth. Most polls conducted on a live cat this way would report that cats are 100% teeth, which high confidence.
Do it with a soft stroking hand, and you’ll find the cat is 100% fur.
Each makes its respective news outlet. (``Cats becoming more vicious! More at 11.’‘)
That BBC poll looks fishy. Take this bit for instance:
51% said they thought attacks on coalition forces were justified.
However, only 35% said foreign troops should leave Iraq now. A further 63% said they should go only after security has improved.
I think that means that a substantial number of people want the troops to stay in order to improve security, but at the same time think that attacks on them are justified in the mean time.
Oh, but the discrepancy between this and the other is pretty easy to explain: this one probably oversamples Sunnis. Note that no ethnic breakdown is given, and that Iran scores the highest on the “which country is encouraging violence” question.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/19_03_07_iraqpollnew.pdf
I would guess their sample was 30% Sunni, about twice the actual proportion of the population.
Mike G - in my experience, real Vermonters hardly ever talk at all.
Posted by robert speirs on 2007 03 19 at 11:11 AM • permalinkHot Air has a posting that looks a bit more at the sampling and methodology of the big poll. He also asks for some statisticians’ opinions if anyone here can help Allahpundit with that.
http://tinyurl.com/3df4lwPosted by andycanuck on 2007 03 19 at 11:28 AM • permalink#12 rhhardin, your sampling methods are correct, but I don’t think you are reporting the correct results. A scientific poll conducted that way on the local population produced the following responses:
Teeth 48%
Claws 42%
Urine 8%
Feces 5%
Confidence 2 sigma or approximately 90%.
[numbers do not sum to 100% because of multiple responses and rounding errors]I feel sure that you will correct your systematic errors before presenting further results.
Regards,
RicThe BBC poll, the much more negative one, is thirty-five percent Sunni Arabs.
Thirty-freaking-five percent! That means Sunni Arabs are overrepresented by more than 2:1!! Good lord, no wonder it’s so negative.
http://abcnews.go.com/images/US/1033aIraqpoll.pdf
This is breathtakingly egregious.
The only one they are mentioning on the radio this morning is the Pessimistic Picture Poll.
Posted by Tony.T.Teacher on 2007 03 19 at 04:51 PM • permalinkAnd here’s Allahpundit of Hot Air on the particularly-b.s. BBC/ABC (America’s) poll:
http://tinyurl.com/yo38xk
(That’s the poll with the 35% oversample of Sunnis.)Posted by andycanuck on 2007 03 19 at 09:16 PM • permalinkI contacted the polling firm, D3 Systems. They said they’d be “more than happy to have a longer conversation about our methods.”
I emailed back and asked:
“Again, thirty-five percent is an extremely unrepresentative sample of Sunni Arabs in Iraq (for which estimates are generally about 15%) and strongly suggests the conclusions regarding the study’s claims overall opinion in Iraq are seriously flawed, as answers to key questions in the survey differ strongly by sect (by as much as 90%). Please let me know whether you were aware of the problem, if it was taken into account, and if so how it is addressed in the data.”
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Better to be shredded in a shredding machine that take a chance with the suicide bombers at the markets eh? All evil has to do to succeed is for good men to do nothing (Memo to pixie and butch, doing nothing is your policy yes?)