Egyptian polls

Interesting piece in Egypt Today about public opinion polling in Egypt.  It looks first at the Information and Decision Support Center for the Egyptian cabinet, which relies on telephone surveys.   The center's director admits the problems with this methodology - it only reaches people with phones, thereby excluding significant social groups; they get a response rate of only about 10% ("we have to make 6000 calls to get 600 answers");  they rely on an outdated phone book;  and many of the people they call somehow seem to think that this official government agency works for the government.   The director says this about the influence of these polls:

The discrepancy between poll findings and decisions does not bother Ammar who still finds her polls effective in the sense that they brief decision makers on opposition arguments so they can respond to them. “Ahmed Nazif cares so much to know people’s opinion before making decisions. Public opinion must have an influence on his decisions but I can’t judge how influential it is,” says Ammar. “But we have the feeling that our work is influential and that people’s opinions serve as a guide to the prime minister since we are bombarded with requests to conduct polls.”

I would love to know if the "Nazif cares so much" was sarcastically inflected, but I guess that will have to remain a mystery. 

In addition to the center, the article also profiles the survey units at the National Center for Criminological and Social Research and the al-Ahram Center, and offers a general overview of the increasing use of such polls in public policy.

The director of the NCCSR research center offers a glowing example of the contempt felt by much of the Egyptian state-elite for the citizenry:

“Public concern has diminished to a large extent. This is due to people’s concern about their personal problems, to tough economic conditions, and to the high illiteracy rate. If you ask the public about their view on the loaf of bread, you can get an opinion because they are concerned about that issue which relates to their daily sufferance. They have information about that due to their daily encounter with that particular issue,” notes Gamal El-Din.

As for sophisticated political issues such as the amendment of the constitution, the masses would not be able to develop a concrete opinion, believes Gamal El-Din. “If you go out to ask ordinary people about the constitutional amendment, they would reply by asking you what constitution means. People are more concerned about finding jobs for their unemployed sons. The same with the elite; they are not clearly informed on the issue. Did the media clarify that matter to the public so they can form an opinion?” Gamal El-Din asks rhetorically.

Also, people would fear to express their views on critical issues due to the lack of a democratic culture, adds Gamal El-Din. “The more the issue is political, the more it becomes too sensitive. You find a high percentage of your respondents checking the ‘I do not know’ box,” says Gamal El-Din.

“In one of the polls we conducted on political parties, a high number of respondents replied by saying ‘I do not even know that we have a multiparty system’. Some even asked: ‘Has King Farouk quit?’” recounts Gamal El-Din. “In that case, you take into consideration all possibilities,” says Gamal El-Din adding that such answers could be driven by ignorance or fear. 

Such contempt for the citizenry on the part of much of the state elite represents a serious impediment to their willingness to implement democratic reforms, I'd say.  Before accepting the verdict that "ignorant Egyptian masses can't be trusted with real voting", though, remember that shocking levels of voter ignorance has been a perennial concern of American public opinion research as well. 

It seems to me that the important nugget contained in the article is the ever-increasing use of survey research in Egypt - and in the wider region.  One of the project directors noted that "The situation is much better now, people are becoming more interactive, people started to hear about us. A culture of public opinion is emerging."  If true, that would presumably increase the response rates and reliability of the surveys.   I remember about ten years ago, a prominent American political scientist specializing in public opinion (John Zaller, I believe) asked half-jokingly "does public opinion exist if there is no-one around to measure it?"   For better or worse, Arab public opinion is increasingly being measured - whether by Zogby and Pew or by local think tanks or by governments.  This isn't just Egypt, of course - it's a trend all over the region.   

This isn't necessarily a good thing:  public opinion surveys tend to disempower the most informed and mobilized individuals, drowning their voices in a sea of relatively uninformed or apathetic responses.  They are easily manipulated by sample selection, by question wording, and so many other methods.  And they can easily produce a passive public, one responding to pre-selected questions which frame the issues in a particular way ("do you approve or disapprove of President Mubarak's plan to build true democracy in Egypt through multiparty presidential elections?"). Public opinion surveys give you snapshots of attitudes, not necessarily the product of informed and passionate public debate. In other words, increased use of such polling - whether privately by governments or publicly in the media - does not necessarily improve the quality of democracy. 

It's all very interesting, and suggests fascinating changes in how we think about and deal with Arab public opinion.  Will increasingly routine public opinion surveys weaken the impact of prominent editorialists or figures in the mass media, by allowing others to claim that they are not representative?  Or will polling reveal the kind of "indexing" seen in the US, where public opinion tends to follow patterns in elite public discourse?   Hard to say - but certainly a question worth following.

Comments

[SP]

I'd be inclined to take public opinion polling in Egypt, especially of the sort conducted by semi-official agencies, with a sackful of salt. There is, as the article mentions, the fear that the polls are just another Big Brother tool; also, it is illegal in Egypt to conduct interviews or polls without prior government permission (though people do get around it), so that tends to exclude the truly interesting or controversial surveys. While I've seen a few interesting public opinion surveys (Tessler and Moaddel, Al-Mishkat centre), it's hard to see them in the same way as polls in the US or UK.