Abu Aardvark

Lebanese public opinion

Zogby International and Shibley Telhami have just released findings from the Lebanon portion of their annual survey of Arab public opinion [PDF file].  The methodology on this one (unlike the al-Arabiya/YouGov one I mentioned yesterday) seems reasonably solid;  carried out November 11-16, 600 respondents, margin of error 4.1%.  All the results are broken down along sectarian lines (Shiite, Sunni, Christian, and Druze).   Here are some of the key findings:

• Attitudes towards the United States remain very unfavorable.  Overall, 26% are very or somewhat favorable, 13% are somewhat unfavorable, and 52% very unfavorable.  96% of Shia, have unfavorable views of the US (87% very unfavorable) and  69% of Sunnis (52% very);  while the US as expected remains more popular among Christians (50% favorable) and Druze (60% favorable).
• Every community says by wide margins that their attitudes are most shaped by US policies rather than US values, and every community overwhelmningly identifies the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the primary policy area:  71% total say that brokering a comprehensive peace agreement with Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 border would be the single step most likely to improve their views of the US. 
• Nobody has much confidence in the US:  60% overall say they have no confidence at all (92% of Shia and 58% of Sunnis).  And nobody believes that Bush is serious about spreading democracy (64% total, including 84% of Shia, 66% of Sunnis, 42% of Christians and 43% of Druze say that "democracy is not a real US objective.")
• who is the biggest winner of the Lebanon-Israel war?  47% of Shia said Hezbollah, 4% said Israel, and 39% said the Lebanese people;  that compares to the total figures of 15% saying Israel, 35% saying Hezbollah, and 26% saying the Lebanese people.   Christians were most likely to say Israel (25%) and the least likely to say Hezbollah (22%), while the Sunnis were the least likely to say "the Lebanese people" (15%).  Who is the biggest loser of the Lebanon-Israel war?  71% of Shia say Israel;  53% of Sunnis, 42% of Christians, and 59% of Druze say the Lebanese people.  No community sees Hezbollah as the biggest loser (only 19% of Christians say so, and that's the most). Finally, since the war, 68% of Shia say that their attitudes towards Hezbollah have become more positive, compared to only 23% of Sunnis, 22% of Christians, and 21% of Druze.
• asked what would happen if the US quickly withdrew its forces from Iraq, 12% of Lebanese said that the situation would not change, 48% said that civil war would rapidly expand, and 32% said that Iraqis would find a way to bridge their differences.  Shia were the most optimistic (32% civil war, 49% reconcile), Druze the most pessimistic (62% civil war, 21% reconcile).
• Nobody expected Saddam's sentencing to provide an opportunity for national reconciliation:  8% said that, compared to 53% who thought it would increase sectarian violence and 28% who thought it would make no difference.   
• Only 42% of Shia think Iran is developing nuclear weapons, but 93% think that Iran has the right to do so.   All other communities overwhelmingly believe that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons (both Sunnis and Christians over 70%).  Only 49% of Sunnis think that Iran should be pressured to stop its nuclear program, along with over 60% of Christians and Druze.
• Interestingly, every community ranks its national identity (Lebanese) as more important than any other affiliation:  70% of Shia, 62% of Sunnis, 78% of Christians, and 91% of Druze.   Arab identity is the overwhelming second most important identity, NOT religion:  46% of Shia, 37% of Sunnis, 26% of Christians, and 62% of Druze.   Only the Christians give more weight to their religious identity than their Arab identity. 
• Most Lebanse adore Jacques Chirac, but not Shia.   Interestingly, the Shia have more admiration for Hugo Chavez than for Mahmoud Ahmednejad - but they would rather be ruled by the Iranian leader than the Venezualan.  Lebanese hate Bush the most of any world leader (especially Shia), but Bashar al-Asad places second (and a strong first for Druze and Christians) - even more unpopular than Olmert or Sharon.
• Israel and the United States are seen as the greatest threats, though Christians and Druze are more afraid of Syria than of the United States. 
• Finally, whatever support for al-Qaeda exists is almost exclusively because it confronts the United States. Nobody admires its methods or supports its goal of creating an Islamic state.

Arabiya's Arab public opinion survey

Al-Arabiya's program Panorama the other day discussed the results of a survey of Arab public opinion conducted with the British YouGov organization.  Conducted in December 2006, it surveyed 3113 people "from various Arab countries".  The results are presented over the course of a talk show, which means that I had to hunt through the transcript looking for numbers rather than having any easily readable report to draw on; if I find a link to the actual survey, I'll add it. (*)  Here are the major findings:

• 81% of Arab respondents support Iran's position on the nuclear issue, while only 14% oppose the Iranian nuclear program.  87%  favor GCC states getting nuclear capabilities, though it's not clear exactly what that means.   
• 88% named Israel the "greatest threat to the security and future of the region", followed by the United States (no number given), al-Qaeda at 41% and then - finally -  Iran with 33%.   The al-Arabiya headline's spin:  "Iran is the greatest threat to the region in the eyes of Arabs, after Israel, the United States, and al-Qaeda." 
• 71% of Arabs blame Israel for last summer's Hezbollah-Israel war, with the United States in second place (percentage not given), while 53% blame actors "such as Hezbollah, Iran, or Syria" (a bizarre formulation, if that's how the question was posed). 
  
• Hezbollah and Nasrallah's popularity has declined since the war.  Among Lebanese (no numbers or demographics given), it has gone from 55% during the war to 28% today (although Seniora's government only gets 33%).  While it isn't highlighted by the host, later in the program someone mentions that Arab support for Hezbollah stands at 74%, which may be a decline from war-time levels but is still quite high.
  
• 39% of Arabs thought Hamas was the best party to lead the Palestinians, while only 11% supported Fatah - compared to a 30% to 27% advantage for Hamas among Palestinian respondents (no numbers of demographics given).  At the Arab level, 61% said that Hamas put Palestinian interests first, while only 17% said that Hamas served an Iranian or Syrian agenda,  while 52% of Palestinian respondents said that Hamas was serving an Iranian or Syrian agenda rather than a Palestinian one.

The most interesting finding in al-Arabiya's survey, it seems to me, is that the surveyed Arabs do not really seem to be buying the "Iranian threat" or "Shia threat" narratives.   Only 14% oppose the Iranian nuclear program, only 33% name Iran as a threat to the region, and 74% continue to support Hezbollah.   

(*)  The minimal methodological information provided makes it hard to know how much stock to put in the findings - no information is given about which countries were surveyed or how many people from each, how they were selected, margin of error, or other basic stuff you'd need to assess the survey's reliability.   

(**) UPDATE:  Erik Nisbet, a survey specialist himself, points out in comments below some peculiarities in the YouGov methodology.  From his description, this has more in common with those silly online polls than with serious public opinion survey research.  If that is in fact how they conducted this survey then the results are for all intents and purposes worthless.  I'll try to find out if they used a different methodology for al-Arabiya... I hope so. 

Zogby: Arab Attitudes 2006

Zogby International has just released the latest annual installment in its five nation surveys of Arab public opinion.  The results won't surprise anyone, but they are still depressing. 

Favorable attitudes towards the United States now stand at 12% in Saudi Arabia, 14% in Egypt, 7% in Morocco, 5% in Jordan, and 28% in Lebanon.    In Jordan, the 5% represents a major decline (although it is worth noting that the Zogby numbers - 34% favorable in 2002 and 33% favorable in 2005 - were consistently much higher than the Pew survey results taken at comparable intervals).   

62% of Saudis, 72% of Egyptians, 57% of Moroccans, 76% of Jordanians, and 47% of Lebanese said that their attitudes towards the US had gotten worse compared to a year ago.   American policies in Iraq and Palestine were far and away the dominant issues driving negative views:  80% each in Saudi Arabia, 60% for Iraq and 55% for Palestine in Egypt, 72% and 78% for Morocco, 63% and 70% for Jordan.  Lebanese focused more on Lebanon.

Arabs in these five countries continue to admire American education (in no country are negative views higher than positives), but otherwise the political hostility to the US seems to be bleeding over into cultural and economic realms more powerfully than in the past.  That's something which Pew also found in its major 2006 study.  Indeed, this is the first year that Zogby has found that negative views of "the American people" outweighed positive views (only Lebanon still has a net positive rating for the American people, although Jordan (31 fav/33 unfav) and Morocco (28/29) are close. 

The one bright spot:  the most important factor driving more positive views of the US was "American democracy", at least in Saudi Arabia (68%), Egypt (39%), and Lebanon (24%).   That's noteworthy because the surveys were done in the middle of November, shortly after the Democratic sweep of Congressional elections.  That finding could, perhaps, speak for itself. 

in search of Arab moderates

I heartily support the idea of the United States trying to mobilize Arab and Muslim moderates against extremists.  But here's the thing:  if you go looking for "Arab moderates" and you mainly find them in the palaces of pro-American dictators, odds are you aren't looking in the right place.  Maybe the overwhelming majority of actual moderate voices in the region are just too busy denouncing your policies and complaining about how you've spent the last five years undermining their position to meet up with you.    Listening to Bush and Rice talking about Arab moderates, I can only think of the immortal Inigo Montoya: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Al-Arabiya: majority of Arabs say al-Qaeda losing, kind of

The Saudi TV station al-Arabiya recently commisioned an Arab public opinion poll by YouGov.  The survey is pretty much garbage, unfortunately, with a sample size of only 537 individuals (the only other information about the sample is that 36% were from North Africa, 27% from the Gulf, and the rest from other Arab countries).  And a lot of the questions seem to be very strangely worded, making it hard to interpret the answers.   That said, here are the main findings of the survey:

• 67% say that al-Qaeda does not have the capability of taking over the Arab or Islamic worlds (this is the result which al-Arabiya chose to lead with).
• 57% say that Arab states are doing a good job fighting terrorism
• 36% say that 9/11 was unjustifiable, 24% say that it was justifiable. 
• 25% say that al-Qaeda was not involved with the 9/11 attacks.   
  
• 36% say that al-Qaeda's actions in Afghanistan are justifiable, 28% in Iraq, 16% London, 11% Madrid, and 9% Indonesia
• 40% are impressed with how al-Qaeda uses the media.
• 61% say that al-Qaeda's actions hurt the image of Muslims. 
• 58% think that Israel benefited from 9/11, and 43% think the US benefited.  21% think that Iran is the greatest beneficiary five years after 9/11, while 24% think al-Qaeda was the greatest winner. 

What to say about these numbers?   That 67% think that al-Qaeda can't take over the Islamic world just says that 67% are in touch with reality, and says nothing about whether the people want al-Qaeda to take over.   That 33% think that al-Qaeda can take over the Arab and Islamic world is fairly surprising, I'd have to say - and (to the extent that this survey has any credibility given methdological concerns) is an indicator of some success for al-Qaeda's media campaign.   (I have no idea how the question about al-Qaeda's use of the media was framed, since the report doesn't say, but 40% admiration for its media campaign has got to be something of a vote of confidence for al-Sahab.)

That only 36% think 9/11 was unjustifiable catches the eye, but only 24% said that it was justifiable, and I just don't know what the other 40% thought.  That 25% continue to deny al-Qaeda's involvement in 9/11 is actually much lower than in the 2006 Pew survey, where 59% of Egyptians and 53% of Jordanians denied Arab involvement in the attacks.   Many of the other findings seem somewhat contradictory, and hard to interpret.

That al-Arabiya commissioned a survey like this is an interesting development in its own right, and one I applaud in general.  But if they are going to do it seriously, they need to do it right. I wish that the methodology on this survey were stronger, so that I could have more confidence in any of its findings.  But since it isn't, I'm not going to expend a huge amount of effort in interpreting the results - just wanted to report them, since the survey's being reported on al-Arabiya. 

Palestinian public opinion survey

Al-Jazeera reports that a new Palestinian public opinion survey finds Palestinians preferring Ismail Haniya (Hamas) over Mahmoud Abbas (Fatah) by more than five percentage points (31.7% to 26.3%).   Al-Jazeera's presentation is a bit misleading, since they highlight the "strongly support" numbers rather than the total of "strongly" and "somewhat" support.   in addition to the 31.7% who "strongly support" Haniyia, 30.6% "somewhat support him, 24.5% "somewhat do not support him, and  11.8% "strongly do not support" him.    As for Abbas, 26.3% strongly support him and 43.7% "somewhat support him", while  20.3% "somewhat do not support" and  9.2% "strongly do not support."  The same survey could be presented like this, then:   70% of Palestinians support Mahmoud Abbas to some degree, compared to 62.3% who support Haniya to some degree.   

Al-Jazeera's choice to spin the results in Haniya's favor is telling (keeping in mind that this is the website, not the TV station).  The headline results strengthen the argument that the kind of harsh military approach Olmert is using in Gaza and Lebanon only strengthens the Islamist alternative.  The more detailed results don't strongly undermine the argument - Haniya doesn't do poorly, and his negatives are no higher, and probably a bit lower, than before the Palestinian-Israeli fighting began.  But it doesn't support the argument as strongly.  And the results also don't show Abbas being undermined dramatically by the violence.  At any rate, it isn't nearly as clear-cut as the Lebanese survey showing a dramatic rise in support for Hezbollah.

Other interesting results from the survey:

• 57.7% supported a ceasefire (hudna was the word used in the survey) with Israel, 38.4% opposed it.
• 49.9% opposed Mahmoud Abass's call to cease firing rockets into Israel unilaterally, while 47.8% supported him.
• On the "Prisoner's Document", 58.6% saw it as an important and positive step, while  37.5% thought the opposite. 
• 76.5% of respondents said the economic situation was bad, just 3.4% said good.  I presume those 3.4% have good guards outside their mansions.   
• 81.4% of respondents wanted the US and Europe to resume financial assistance to the Palestinian government.  But only 33.9% said that their view of America and Europe (all the questions combined the two, not asking about the US specificall) would improve if they did so;  28.9% said that this would actually make their views of the US and Europe less positive (?!?);  and 36.1% said it would make no difference.
• 51.6% said that Arab states are not capable of offering adequate financial support.

TFT Survey

Terror Free Tomorrow, which describes itself as a non-partisan organization advised by John McCain, Lee Hamilton, and Thomas Kean, and formed to "understand and undermine the popular support base  that empowers global terrorism", has just released yet another multi-nation survey of Muslim public opinion.  Among the key findings:

• Favorable views of the United States are held by 12% of Turks, 44% of Indonesians, 29% of Palestinians, 11% of Saudis, 16% of Emiratis (United Arab Emirates), and 26% of Pakistanis. 
• 31% of Saudis, 23% of Turks, and 70% of Pakistanis support Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons;  55% of Saudis and of Turks oppose it, along with 13% of Pakistanis;  the rest are undecided. 
• Only 31% of Saudis, 21% of Turks, and 7% of Pakistanis favor US-led military action if negotiations fail. 
• 67% of Pakistanis, 65% of Saudis, 56% of Emiratis (UAE), 52% of Palestians, and 67% of Turks consider the Danish cartoons crisis to be evidence of "Western antagonism towards Islam."   No more than 25% in any country (that's the UAE) thought that it was an "isolated example that doesn't reflect Western views of Islam."
• Large majorities of Pakistanis and Indonesians say that American humanitarian assistance improves their view of America.
• 42% of Saudis and 48% of Emiratis have a less favorable view of America because of the Dubai ports controversy.  (only 48% of the UAE?  What ever happened to nationalism, folks?)
• When asked whether suicide bombing was ever justifiable, 82.7% of Indonesians and 85.8% of Pakistanis said "never justified" (up a few points from 2005 in each country).
• Indonesian confidence in Osama bin Laden dropped from 23.2% to 11.7% since last  year, while  Pakistani confidence in bin Laden holds fairly steady (32.8%, down from 33.5%). 
• 66% of Pakistanis oppose the US-led war on terrorism, compared to 30.8% of Indonesians.

Make of these findings what you will.
Notes on methodology: all interviews were face to face.  A different organization did the work in each country, which makes me a bit uneasy.  The Pakistan sample was "disproportionately urban," as was the Saudi sample. 

Yet more Jordanian public opinion

Man, remember the old days when political scientists complained that there was no public opinion survey data in the Middle East?  No more.  Jordan's Center for Strategic Studies has just released yet another survey, this one focused on attitudes towards terrorism following the Amman hotel bombings.  The key findings (Jordan Times link should be good for a week or so; al-Ghad link in Arabic):

• The percentage of respondents who consider Al Qaeda (bin Laden) a legitimate resistance group dropped from 66.8 per cent in 2004 to 20 per cent in December 2005.
• 72.2 per cent of the polled national sample consider Al Qaeda in Iraq (Zarqawi) to be a terrorist organisation, while only 6.2 per cent said it was a legitimate resistance movement.

Going into the internals reveals something extremely interesting, though, which strongly supports the "Zarqawi vs Zawahiri" argument I've been making the last few months:  among "opinion leaders", bin Laden's Al Qaeda (73.4 per cent) and Zarqawi's Al Qaeda (84.6 per cent) were overwhelmingly now seen as terrorist organisations. But only half (48.9%)  of the national sample respondents considered Bin Laden's Al Qaeda to be a terrorist organisation, while around three quarters of respondents described Zarqawi's Al Qaeda a terrorist group.  (Support for Hamas and Hizbollah remains high, though a smidge lower.)  92% of opinion leaders view the subway bombings in London as terrorism, 95% see Sharm El Sheikh attacks as terrorism, 96% see the Amman hotel bombings as acts of terrorism.  63% of national sample respondents view the London bombings as terrorist acts, 77.4 per cent, view Sharm El Sheikh blasts as terrorist and 94% find the Amman attacks as terrorist.

Other interesting findings:

• In 2004, 90 per cent of respondents considered the killing of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza by Israel to be a “terrorist” act. This opinion did not change in 2005.
• When it comes to Israeli assassination of Palestinian political leaders in the West Bank and Gaza, 84 per cent in 2004 and 88.7 per cent of respondents in 2005 considered the acts to be “terrorist.”
• 86.3 per cent of respondents in 2004 and 78.3 per cent in 2005 regard US-led armed operations in Iraq as “terrorist” acts. 87 per cent of opinion leaders do consider the US-led armed operations in Iraq a “terrorist” act.
• With regard to armed military operations carried out against US troops in Iraq, the majority of Jordanians, or 68.8 per cent in 2004 and 63.6 per cent in 2005, termed the attacks as “not terrorist.”  82.8 per cent of opinion leaders said they consider armed military operations against the US-led allied forces in Iraq to be non-terrorist acts.

In other words, condemnation of Zarqawi is not translating into significant changes in the mass public with regard to attitudes towards Iraq or Israel.  Where "opinion leaders" are largely equating Zarqawi and bin Laden, see attacks in London as similar to attacks in Egypt or Amman, and buy into the King's war against a general jihadist ideology, far fewer of the mass public is doing so.  According to this survey, almost all Jordanians are enraged at Zarqawi for the hotel bombing atrocity - but considerably fewer are translating this into condemnation of al-Qaeda Central.  Just as in the Palestinian poll I reported earlier this week, this new CSS poll suggests that the US should not automatically assume that Zarqawi's atrocities will alone turn the tide in its favor.

Protesting the Zogby poll

I missed this in the Arabic edition, but in its English edition Al-Sharq al-Awsat protests against the Zogby/Telhami survey of media preferences.  The Zogby poll seems to have struck a nerve with al-Arabiya, which scored surprisingly poorly, and al-Sharq al-Awsat is giving its media twin an outlet for airing its complaints.  In doing so, it highlights some important issues about the Arab media environment which go beyond the specifics of this little scuffle. 

The main objection to the survey in the piece,  other than some fairly scurrilous personal allegations against Jim Zogby, is that it is biased in favor of al-Jazeera.  Zogby responds, in essence, that the survey wasn't biased but the facts might be - they asked what station people primarily watched for international news, and it turned out to be al-Jazeera.  Other points raised:

• Some stations were left out which should have been included, such as Dubai TV, Future TV, and Saudi TV.  This is a weak complaint - I doubt any of those would have affected the headline findings - and is mainly included, I suspect, as a smokescreen to try to conceal that the complaints are primarily, and still transparently, on behalf of al-Arabiya.   Zogby responds by pointing out that they did ask about those stations in the appropriate markets (Future TV was included in the Lebanon questions, Dubai TV in the UAE question) but not where they had no audience ("it was not logical to ask about Dubai TV in Morocco"). 
  
• The survey left out terrestrial stations, which still enjoy popularity with  national audiences.  This complaint has some merit, but is ultimately irrelevant.  On the one hand it's true that terrestrial stations still command considerable national audiences - and it would be interesting to see how the satellite television stations did relative to those national stations.  But on the other hand, that wasn't the survey's question.   The survey wanted to know about trends across the Arab world as a whole, and included stations which commanded a regional rather than exclusively a national audience (though I don't know why the Egyptian TV station was included). 
• Al-Arabiya alleges that Zogby was biased against al-Arabiya because MBC had recently canceled his talk show - a rather scurrilous personal allegation which reflects poorly on al-Arabiya.  Anyway, I thought Zogby's show was on Abu Dhabi TV - a fact noted later in the same article!. 
• Al-Arabiya complains that the survey didn't include Iraq, where it scores well.  Fair enough.  From a researcher's perspective it's easy to understand, though: Iraq has become one of the most heavily surveyed of markets, including the recent Ipsos Stat one which showed al-Arabiya doing well there, and including it wouldn't have added much to our knowledge. Same thing for the Palestinian areas - which Zogby also excluded, and in which al-Jazeera would have done much better and al-Arabiya much worse.   
• Al-Arabiya contests the findings in Saudi Arabia, noting a small sample size and pointing to different findings by competing surveys (including, again, Ipsos).

The article ends with Jihad Ballout, former al-Jazeera spokesman and now al-Arabiya spokesman, taking a page right out of my usual line of questions for al-Hurra:

“With all due respect to Zogby International, the best approach to uncover viewing trends in the Arab world is to rely on the conclusions of specialist organizations working on the ground”, for example Ipsos Stat which “is recognized by almost all advertising agencies and leading television channels in the Arab world.”

“Al Arabiya was the most popular channel in Iraq while al Jazeera was sixth. Al Arabiya was also in first place in Saudi Arabia. How does Zogby International explain its results which contradict the findings of market researchers who specialize in the Arab world?”

The specific questions are artfully framed but not particularly compelling - Zogby didn't measure Iraq, so the Ipsos findings don't contradict it, for example.  But the more general point is genuinely important.  I agree with Ballout that the best source is independent specialist organizations (such as the Arab Advisors Group), with any privately commissioned survey to be viewed with some suspicion.  Ironically, Zogby's survey actually fits that bill pretty well: it was commissioned by an academic interested in establishing measures of an independent variable (Arab media preferences), not by one of the competing television stations eager to prove its success. 

But while they are more useful than much of the other information out there, Zogby surveys aren't a long term solution.  As long as there is no independent, respected, regular instrument to measure audience share - an Arabic Nielsons - these kinds of claims and counter-claims will continue.   Market share matters enormously to these stations, even if there are no real advertising revenues attached, because they are seen as measures of power.  Whether it's al-Hurra or al-Arabiya or al-Jazeera, these stations are going to trumpet evidence of their success and dispute evidence of their weaknesses.  I have to think that it's only a matter of time before some enterprising organization moves to fill this increasingly inexplicable gap. 

 

Jordan - another opinion poll

Al-Ghad reported on yet another public opinion poll in Jordan last week, this one conducted by Musa Shtawi's Center for Social Research (this English-language Jordan Times link should be good for another couple of days; here's Khalaf's take on it).   Its findings are a mixed bag, and a little hard to interpret.

The headlined findings in most of the reports I've seen are that 70.6% of Jordanians think that the country "is moving in the right direction", and an overwhelming majority of Jordanians see security and terrorism as the top priority right now. 90.4% support a proposed tough new counter-terrorism law.  Public confidence is highest in the military (98.2%) and the intelligence agencies (97.6%).  Frankly, if I were asked that question in Jordan, or any other Arab country, I'd know the right answer too. 

Reading the Jordan Times and al-Ghad is like reading two entirely different surveys.  The Jordan Times chose to highlight a rather oddly presented table of the "top three priorities facing the government":  29% ranked terrorism number one, with no other issue cracking 11% as a first choice.  Drawing on the line labeled "total" gives this rather, um, intriguing set of aggregate responses to the question of the three highest priority issues for the government:

Terrorism                                         25.5%
Do Not Know                                    21.2%
Instability of Neighboring Countries    17.9%
No problems                                    14.9%
Opposition to Jordan's Policies             3.8%
Weak democratic practices                    3.2%
Impact of a weak economy                    3.1%

If that's an accurate summary of Jordanian priorities right now, it's rather sad:  more people say Jordan has "no problems" than place either democracy or the economy in the top three issues facing the country.  Heck, more people see political opposition as a greater problem than the weakness of democracy or the economy.   What's even more striking:  in a poll conducted by the same organization in September (before the Amman terror attack), corruption was the highest ranking issue;  now only 1.7% place it in the top three priorities.   It might not be surprising that democracy and public freedoms have receded in importance in the wake of a terrorist attack - but what explains the sudden loss of interest in economic and social issues, which had been in the forefront in most other recent polls?   

Perhaps the answer comes from reading al-Ghad, which presents the data entirely differently.  In al-Ghad, the key findings are this list of "the number one problem facing the country today":

Rising cost of living                     30.2%
Unemployment                              27.4%
Poverty                                            18.3%
Declining economic conditions    5.9%
Corruption                                            4.0%

How to reconcile that with the Jordan Times presentation is anyone's guess.  But if al-Ghad presents it more accurately, then the terror attacks have not in fact diverted the attention of Jordanians from economic issues, and those remain the top priority - even if no political freedoms or democracy issue rates a mention. 

The only reassuring finding from a liberal's point of view is that just over 75% say that reforms should continue after the terrorist attacks, with only 11% saying they should go slower and 6% saying they should be ended.  69% say that security and reform should be balanced, compared to 25% who say that security should take priority over reform.  Since "reform" is the official policy of the Bakhit government, however, this question is less revealing than it might have been - it isn't posed as an alternative to counter-terrorism (i.e. "should the response to terror be more counter-terror legislation or more political reform?"), so respondents aren't really asked to decide their priorities.

Finally, on the "public sphere" or "town square" question:  48.4% say that the freedom to publicly criticize the government's policies is guaranteed - which should be seen as distressingly low, but is actually higher than in other recent surveys.   Since if anything this freedom has objectively been restricted in the last few months (particularly with regard to Islamist or radical discourse), you'd have to suspect that this question is actually a proxy for "should there be freedom to publicly criticize the government" - and that's the number which has gone down.