WaPost OpEd: "The Iranian People Speak" (claims election may be legitimate).....

[Junkdrawer]

By Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty
Monday, June 15, 2009

The election results in Iran may reflect the will of the Iranian people. Many experts are claiming that the margin of victory of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the result of fraud or manipulation, but our nationwide public opinion survey of Iranians three weeks before the vote showed Ahmadinejad leading by a more than 2 to 1 margin -- greater than his actual apparent margin of victory in Friday's election

...

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.

...

Iranians view their support for a more democratic system, with normal relations with the United States, as consonant with their support for Ahmadinejad. They do not want him to continue his hard-line policies. Rather, Iranians apparently see Ahmadinejad as their toughest negotiator, the person best positioned to bring home a favorable deal -- rather like a Persian Nixon going to China.

Allegations of fraud and electoral manipulation will serve to further isolate Iran and are likely to increase its belligerence and intransigence against the outside world. Before other countries, including the United States, jump to the conclusion that the Iranian presidential elections were fraudulent, with the grave consequences such charges could bring, they should consider all independent information. The fact may simply be that the reelection of President Ahmadinejad is what the Iranian people wanted.

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.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/14/AR2009061401757.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

And here's Juan Cole's take on the article:

Terror Free Tomorrow Poll Did not Predict Ahmadinejad Win

Noting my skepticism about the announced outcome of Friday's presidential elections in Iran, readers have been asking me what I think about this WaPo op-ed by Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty pointing out that a scientifically weighted Project for a Terror Free Tomorrow poll in mid-May found Ahmadinejad beating Mir-Hosain Mousavi by a 2 to 1 margin.

I have enormous respect for Ballen, PFTFT and Doherty & the New America Foundation.

But as a mere social historian I would say that the poll actually tends to confirm some of my doubts about the announced electoral tallies.

The poll did not find that Ahmadinejad had majority support. It found that the level of support for the incumbent was 34%, with Mousavi at 14%.

27% said that they were undecided. (Some 22% of respondents are not accounted for by any of the 4 candidates or by the undecided category, and I cannot find an explanation for this. Did they plan to write in for other candidates? A little over a quarter of respondents did say they wanted more choice than they were being given.)

...

http://www.juancole.com/2009/06/terror-free-tomorro-poll-did-not.html

[grannie4peace]

1. bullshit- legal, my ass!!!!

:wtf: :argh: :grr:

[babylonsister]

2. Yes, I watched the Iranian people 'speak' all weekend via youtubes,

twitters, etc., because most communications were cut off. Yea, that's fair and balanced. What are they hiding?

I wonder if we'll ever know the actual results? I tend to doubt it.

[Hannah Bell]

4. you watched all the iranian people speak? really?

all 70 million?

[EFerrari]

5. Maybe not these people:

It's pretty hard to FAKE something like that.

[EFerrari]

3. Between the bs in the American media and the bs in the Arab media

we may never know what happened.

[Junkdrawer]

6. I am not a fan of the Iranian Gov't, but the Western media response....

seems FAR from fair and balanced. I will say that the Iranian government seems surprised and alarmed by the protests - and all-too-willing to overreact.

I'm still trying to get a handle the whole thing.

[EFerrari]

7. I've gone from thinking it was probably stolen to realizing

that I don't know what happened AND that there's been a PR BLITZ here since Friday night. Replete with atrocity stories that don't pan out. Hatred. It's bizarre.

People cheering on the potential deaths of Iranians for a cause they haven't even verified. Unreal.

[Joe Bacon]

8. More lies from the Whoreshington Post

Typical neocon bullshit.

[BlooInBloo]

9. The money quote, which you cut off *just* before it came....

"Here's the important point: 60% of the 27% who said they were undecided favored political reform. As Ballen wrote at that time:

' A close examination of our survey results reveals that the race may actually be closer than a first look at the numbers would indicate. More than 60 percent of those who state they don’t know who they will vote for in the Presidential elections reflect individuals who favor political reform and change in the current system.' "

[EFerrari]

10. Or maybe this is the money quote:

Iranians view their support for a more democratic system, with normal relations with the United States, as consonant with their support for Ahmadinejad. They do not want him to continue his hard-line policies. Rather, Iranians apparently see Ahmadinejad as their toughest negotiator, the person best positioned to bring home a favorable deal -- rather like a Persian Nixon going to China.

And btw, where are those tanks?