Ahmadinejad won the elections without fraud (Washington Post op-ed)

[AlexanderProgressive]

Members of an independent polling firm have penned an article in the Washington Post, explaining the following:

While Western news reports from Tehran in the days leading up to the voting portrayed an Iranian public enthusiastic about Ahmadinejad's principal opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi, our scientific sampling from across all 30 of Iran's provinces showed Ahmadinejad well ahead.

Independent and uncensored nationwide surveys of Iran are rare. Typically, preelection polls there are either conducted or monitored by the government and are notoriously untrustworthy. By contrast, the poll undertaken by our nonprofit organizations from May 11 to May 20 was the third in a series over the past two years. Conducted by telephone from a neighboring country, field work was carried out in Farsi by a polling company whose work in the region for ABC News and the BBC has received an Emmy award. Our polling was funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

The breadth of Ahmadinejad's support was apparent in our preelection survey. During the campaign, for instance, Mousavi emphasized his identity as an Azeri, the second-largest ethnic group in Iran after Persians, to woo Azeri voters. Our survey indicated, though, that Azeris favored Ahmadinejad by 2 to 1 over Mousavi.
div]

Background provided on the authors:


Ken Ballen is president of Terror Free Tomorrow: The Center for Public Opinion, a nonprofit institute that researches attitudes toward extremism. Patrick Doherty is deputy director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. The groups' May 11-20 polling consisted of 1,001 interviews across Iran and had a 3.1 percentage point margin of error.

[Captain Hilts]

1. I am SO glad I cancelled my subscription after they hired Michael Gerson. nt

[mwb970]

2. Are they wrong about the Iranian election then? /nt

[Captain Hilts]

7. I don't know. But they're imprudent to make such a carved in granite judgment so soon. nt

[tsuki]

28. If this is true, I think so.

From a NIAC reader:
One close friend of mine worked as election official in Shiraz. He says they received 70 ballot boxes, in which 40 of them were with broken seals. The answer to the question of “why the seals are open?” was that the boxes move in the car during transit, so the seals came off. He says the votes in the 40 open boxes were all for Ahmadinejad and Mousavi was leading in the rest of the 30 boxes.

http://www.andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com

[AlexanderProgressive]

29. "one close friend of mine"

Someone asked for "verifiable evidence."

Let's have verifiable evidence.

[Mojorabbit]

41. Juan Cole

takes this apart on his site. It seems he doesn't buy it either.

[flpoljunkie]

22. Andrew Sullivan on this polling: Checking Fred Hiatt

Checking Fred Hiatt

That poll that Fred Hiatt ran this morning? Showing 2-1 Ahmadinejad support. It was taken three weeks before the vote, before the campaign took off, and it had one huge asterisk in it:

The poll that appears in today's op-ed shows a 2 to 1 lead in the thinnest sense: 34 percent of those polled said they'd vote for Ahmadinejad, 14 percent for Mousavi. That leaves 52 percent unaccounted for. In all, 27 percent expressed no opinion in the election, and another 15 percent refused to answer the question at all. Six percent said they'd vote for none of the listed candidates; the rest for minor candidates.

Troublingly, this enormously pertinent fact* was left out of the op-ed. Who edited it? Why were its results distorted to buttress Ahmadinejad? What is Fred Hiatt up to?

*http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/14/AR2009061401757.html

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/06/checking-fred-hiatt.html

[grantcart]

30. Forget reading the OP just read this reply

[vaberella]

49. Wow...extremely interesting. n/t

[glitch]

3. Correct me if I am wrong please, but isn't New America Foundation a new morph of PNAC? nt

[AlexanderProgressive]

14. I've never heard that NAF is a new morph of PNAC

Any links?

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=New_America_Foundation

[glitch]

21. No link, just a memory which could be muddled. Unfortunate choice of name if not.

edit Frida Berrigan part of it, so it can't be all bad. Frances Fukuyama was in PNAC. Their donors are
* David and Lucile Packard Foundation
* Pew Charitable Trusts
* John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

Thanks for the link.

[Doctor_J]

23. "President of Terror Free Tomorrow"

yah, that sounds pretty PNACey to me.

[Perky]

31. WHy would the NEOCons want to prop up this guy by sayin g that he legitimately won?

[Blue_Tires]

32. Because like Africa, the one thing the neocons DON'T want in the middle east

is peace, religious moderation and progress...neocons want messed-up, strife-torn situations...

[Perky]

33. Nonsense

The NeoCons want Dictators they can control or pro-wetsern Democracies to satiate their need for oil. There is no advantage in propping up the presen regime, Particulary when such a regime could work to detabalize all the "good work that has been done" in Iraq.

[PVnRT]

34. Because Ahmadinijad is a convenient Emmanuel Goldstein

He's the bad guy. We have to go take him out!

It's harder to argue for invasion and war when there isn't the Supereme Evil there.

[Perky]

52. Again that makes little sense

NeoCOns do not want war// They want Regime change. Legitimising the reigmime as not only elected,,, but elected with a mandate make it very hard to demand Rrgime change and certainly a longer approach, By saying he is deligimate as Elliot Abrams did as the votes came in they have a much stronger case even if they do not have popular support.

[Egnever]

59. They dont want war?

Why the sudden rush to it in Iraq then?

[Perky]

62. They want Regime Change more than War.... War is just one way to get what they want

But I would imagine that getting rid of Ahmadinejad by election rather than war is a great thing in thier view. Make no mistakes, they want the oilfields and a war puts that at risk.


That is one of the leassons learned in Iraq.

There is no reason they would created polling that supports Ahmadinejad. None.

[Butch350]

61. They want the guy in who'll help boost american defense contracts.

DOH!

[bdamomma]

64. to keep Iran in the "axis" and to rub crap in Obama's face.

[CreekDog]

39. That wants a war with Iran

:eyes:

[raincity_calling]

42. NAF formed 1999 - FPI is the new PNAC

http://antiwar.com/ips/lubanlobe.php?articleid=14463

A newly-formed and still obscure neoconservative foreign policy organization is giving some observers flashbacks to the 1990s, when its predecessor staked out the aggressively unilateralist foreign policy that came to fruition under the George W. Bush administration.

The blandly-named Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) – the brainchild of Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, neoconservative foreign policy guru Robert Kagan, and former Bush administration official Dan Senor – has thus far kept a low profile; its only activity to this point has been to sponsor a conference pushing for a U.S. "surge" in Afghanistan.

But some see FPI as a likely successor to Kristol's and Kagan's previous organization, the now-defunct Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which they launched in 1997 and which became best known for leading the public campaign to oust former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein both before and after the Sep. 11 attacks.

PNAC's charter members included many figures who later held top positions under Bush, including Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and his top deputy, Paul Wolfowitz.

RE NAF: I don't know what NAF's leanings are. However journalist Steve Coll, author of Ghostwars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, heads up NAF. I don't think he is a neocon, but I don't think he is what I would call a liberal.

[glitch]

44. Thanks! I knew I'd read they'd regrouped somewhere.

Although I would expect them to "seed" other think tanks as well.

[chill_wind]

4. Sure he did.

Pre-election rally pics.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5852399&mesg_id=5852399

[Thrill]

5. So they did their poll before the National Televised debate?

Which was considered the turning point for Mousavi

[tocqueville]

6. first video of the rally...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8101018.stm

[Gman]

8. This smells

Anything from anyone who is president of something that uses "terror" in it's name is highly suspect. I'm starting to think the RW wants and needs Ahmadinejad to be Ahmadinejad. If he's not there, then Obama gets a victory because of his speech in Cairo. The RW has no qualms risking global thermonuclear warfare for the sake of ideology.

[Schema Thing]

9. Bingo

[Teaser]

10. YEAH,OK

whatever.

[RaleighNCDUer]

11. So why, exactly, do RW think tanks want Ahmadinejad to be the president

of Iran?

[tocqueville]

13. see here

Neocons for Ahmadinejad

By Daniel Luban

At Wednesday’s Heritage Foundation conference on the Middle East peace process (which, as I wrote yesterday, was primarily devoted to pushing the almost-universally-scorned “three-state solution” for Israel-Palestine), Middle East Forum director Daniel Pipes made an unusually revealing comment while discussing Iran’s upcoming presidential elections.

“I’m sometimes asked who I would vote for if I were enfranchised in this election, and I think that, with due hesitance, I would vote for Ahmadinejad,” Pipes said. The reason, Pipes went on, is that he would “prefer to have an enemy who’s forthright and obvious, who wakes people up with his outlandish statements.” (Video of the event is available by following the link to the Heritage website; Pipes’s comments come at about the 1:29:00 mark.)

http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/?p=256#comments

[Doctor_J]

25. First, they need a perpetual state of fear and near-war. 2nd, they want Obama to fail

which will help with the first one.

[pnwmom]

12. What use is any poll conducted weeks before an election? n/t

[alcibiades_mystery]

15. People will believe the "polls" that confirm their already existing belief

Most people here really really wanted Moussavi to win, so they will believe only "statistical" evidence that confirms that belief. They believe it was "impossible" for Ahmadinejad to win 65% of the vote, so they will disbelieve any evidence suggesting that that's precisely what happened. They will ask, endlessly, "qui bono?" for the sources of information they dislike, but never ask the same questions of the information sources they already believe.

This entire discussion is, to put it another way, an embarrassing farce.

[havocmom]

24. I figure it's possible Ahmadinejad won by 65%, but the speed at which the vote was counted

and election certified (by clerics for the status quo) makes one wonder about the possibility of fraud.

[zulchzulu]

16. Let's see verifiable evidence... n/t

[villager]

17. then shouldn't his 65% "legitimate supporters" be filling the streets?

n/t

[blm]

40. BINGO! Score a big one for LOGIC.

.

[AlexanderProgressive]

55. Not necessarily. We Democrats didn't fill the streets in 2000

Yet we won those elections. And how did you come up with the "65%" figure that is supposed to fill the streets? Has there been a Demostration in the history of humanity where all the supporters of a candidate show up? That would be some amazing feat.

[Aloha Spirit]

56. They came pretty close to that today in Tehran.

There are about 4 and a half million eligible voters in the city and according to official election results Moussavi got 46% of votes in Tehran province, so that is roughly 2 million voters to 1-2 million demonstrators in the city today.

[villager]

60. So American apathy "proves" the legitimacy of Iran's stolen election!?

n/t

[liberal N proud]

18. As so did bu$h in two elections.

What a tool!

[Doctor_J]

19. Like Mitt Romney, the WP is hoping for a win for the terrorists

Not surprising they would print op-eds from others of the same mind.

[Hippo_Tron]

20. If you read the actual article it says they polled "Three Weeks Before the Election"

Gallup did that in 1948 and this was the result...

[RaleighNCDUer]

26. Need I even suggest the impossibility of an unbiased poll in an

authoritarian state?

Which is easier - lying to a pollster you don't know, never met, who could be working for anybody; or serving two years in prison for being an anti-government agitator?

[high density]

27. Polled May 11-20... Yawn.

Are we supposed to believe that polls predict the future now?

[FrenchieCat]

35. Yes, WAPO....

and there's WMDs in Iraq! :eyes:

[WeDidIt]

36. The Neo-Cons have a vested interest in Ahmadi-nejad remaining in power n/t

[Cha]

53. I'm sure World Peace doesn't interest

them in the slightest.

[DCBob]

37. Three week old poll is meaningless. Over 50% undecideds.

What non-sense to base anything on that data. They sound like propaganda people for Ahmadinejad.

[CreekDog]

38. If polling in Azeri showed Mousavi ahead by 2 to 1 and election results opposite of that

how can you say that based on polling, that Ahmadinijad won without fraud?

his own polling results that are diametrically opposed to the outcome in that region and yet he argues "no fraud".

ridiculous.

[WonderGrunion]

43. The Ayatollah of Iran has some doubts about that.

Hence the full investigation of the election.

[Romulox]

45. Center/right newspaper defends the status quo. No one is surprised. nt

[AlexanderProgressive]

47. The same Washington Post endorsed Barack Obama for President

hardly the status quo:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/16/AR2008101603436.html

[Romulox]

63. The same one that runs Will, Broder, Krauthammer, Kristol, Mallaby, and has a Geithner and Summers

op ed on their "most viewed" links!

[4lbs]

46. The incumbent President of Iran won fairly? Yeah sure.

How can a nation count 40 million ballots by hand in just a few hours?



California, in Nov 2008, had about 18 million ballots cast, less than half that in Iran. It took officials two full days (48 hours) to count them all, and a lot were done electronically!

[Uzybone]

48. The fact that Ahmadinejad "routed" his opponents in thier hometowns is enbough for me

it was rigged. This is classic third world rigging.

[invictus]

50. It's funny how the neo-cons are Ahmadinejad's biggest supporters.

nt

[Drunken Irishman]

51. A month old poll for OUR presidential election would've shown a different outcome too!

Drr.

A month prior to the election, McCain still was in somewhat striking distance of Obama and lost in a landslide.

You can't use a month old poll to prove an election.

Fucking morons.

:eyes:

[Malikshah]

54. This is so frikking laughable-- is there a real link to this journalistic atrocity?

What's next, the Grandwizard's take on Affirmative Action? Andrew Dice Clay's on NOW?


" Ken Ballen is president of Terror Free Tomorrow: The Center for Public Opinion, a nonprofit institute that researches attitudes toward extremism. Patrick Doherty is deputy director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. The groups' May 11-20 polling consisted of 1,001 interviews across Iran and had a 3.1 percentage point margin of error. "

Serially, this got to be a joke!

[mod mom]

57. UK Telegraph: leaked election results show Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came third

Iran protest cancelled as leaked election results show Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came third

Iran's reformist presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi has called off a major rally to protest last Friday's election results, amid claims police had been cleared to open fire on protesters.

By Colin Freeman
Published: 11:21AM BST 15 Jun 2009

-snip
Mr Mousavi's cancellation of the protest came as sporadic disturbances continued around the Iranian capital, and reports circulated of leaked interior ministry statistics showing him as the clear victor in last Friday's polls.

The statistics, circulated on Iranian blogs and websites, claimed Mr Mousavi had won 19.1 million votes while Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won only 5.7 million.

The two other candidates, reformist Mehdi Karoubi and hardliner Mohsen Rezai, won 13.4 million and 3.7 million respectively. The authenticity of the leaked figures could not be confirmed.

-snip

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/5540211/Iran-protest-cancelled-as-leaked-election-results-show-Mahmoud-Amadinejad-came-third.html

[jefferson_dem]

58. In the field from May 11 to May 20.

Good God. Dismiss this stupid shit.