Daniel Ortega would Win Elections in Nicaragua, According to New Poll

[dipsydoodle]

Managua, May 24 (Prensa Latina) The Sandinista leader, Daniel Ortega, would win the general election next November 6 and would continue to rule Nicaragua for five more years, according to a new survey.

The consultation, held last Saturday, was conducted by the New Century entity, which issues a monthly diagnostic of how Nicaraguans intend to vote in those elections.

The study included 820 urban and rural areas using the method of the "black box" or a simulated poll in which 3,600 people marked their favourite candidate, in a free and secret way, in a ballot with the names of all presidential candidates.

Some 49.8 percent of respondents were in favor of Ortega, more than the 47.7 percent registered in the previous survey on April 10, while the other four candidates lost points in relation to that period.

http://www.plenglish.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=290886&Itemid=1

[Peace Patriot]

1. Somebody unrec'ed this merely informational post! They don't like the bad news that the Left

is still very much the dominant force in Latin American politics?

Something ticked one our RW DUers off. They must be in a constant state of apoplexy these days.

-----------------------

Interesting way to conduct a poll--not face to face but by secret ballot. I've often wondered about opinion polls in, say, Colombia, under, say, the fascist mafia rule of Alvaro Uribe. The polls kept reporting his astounding popularity (70%, 80%) but, given the mass murders going on, perpetrated by the Colombian military and its death squads--murders of trade unionists, teachers, community activists, human rights workers, peasant farmers and others--and Uribe's massive, illegal domestic spying (spying even on judges and prosecutors), I often wondered what ordinary people would say, if approached by a stranger with a clipboard at their front door, or on the street, or calling on the phone, asking what they thought of Uribe. They might speak against him if they wanted to risk getting their head shot off. I also wondered how the pollsters gathered opinions in the killing fields of Colombia--vast rural areas where FIVE MILLION peasant farmers were being displaced from their lands by state terror. Would the poor speak up and give their true opinion of this dreadful government? Not likely. Would pollsters even go to those places? Hard to know. And if it's a phone poll, how many dirty poor peasant farmers have phones?

Poll by secret ballot is an interesting alternative for those kind of situations--where your life may well be at risk for voicing your opinion or where fear and intimidation of any kind are being used to silence people. I hope it catches on for obtaining a true opinion sample in countries or regions where people are not free to say what they really think.

[Judi Lynn]

2. We know about Colombia's vast, pervasive ability to get information on people, don't we?

Doesn't take long to remember the news articles we read for a while about a former para who turned state's evidence and testified against a narco-paramilitary monster, who was spirited off to the end of the earth in Canada, given a new name, who was there only a short time before he started getting threats on his cell phone telling him they even knew where his children went to school, and he started begging the Canadian government for protection.

Fat chance someone will simply tell a voice on the phone in Colombia if he doesn't like the government's way of doing things.

You've got it nailed.

To find out how they really think, don't put them in jeopardy by personalizing it in a phone call, which allows the gathering of your name and address.

The part about poverty is correct, as well. As we have seen written again and again, the poorest people (the majority in Latin America) DON'T have enough disposable income to see phones as a necessity, don't have them, don't get included in phone polls, anyway. Any poll taken without the participation of the majority is NOT representative.

[naaman fletcher]

7. Latin Americans don't have phones?

Latin America's mobile telephone market is performing strongly, with mobile subscriptions having overtaken fixed lines as the preferred method of communication. In 2009, mobile subscriptions penetration totalled 88.2% of the population.

The mobile telephone industry has benefited from generally opening up to competition while geographical difficulties in laying fixed line infrastructure have encouraged a move to mobiles.
Key points

Latin America's mobile telephone industry has a high degree of market penetration. Mobile subscriptions totalled 88.2% of the region's population in 2009, compared to 55.2% in Asia Pacific, 90.4% in North America and 50.6% in the Middle East and Africa;"

http://blog.euromonitor.com/2010/05/regional-focus-latin-america-enjoys-mobile-telephone-boom.html

[Bacchus39]

8. wow, no kidding. developing countries have skipped the land line phase

of technological evolution. its MUCH more likely for someone to have a cell phone than a land line. and while a family might have a land line, various family members are likely to have their own cell phone.

what an unbelievably naive misconception of latin american society.

[naaman fletcher]

9. you mean,

people who have never been anywhere near Latin America can't make it up for it by reading blogs?

[naaman fletcher]

11. reference please?

you said "As we have seen written again and again, the poorest people (the majority in Latin America) DON'T have enough disposable income to see phones as a necessity, don't have them, don't get included in phone polls, "

Can you point me to any of these written sources? As this is a forum for education and sharing information, I find information that is quite contrary to what you posted, and my own personal experiences in latin america suggest that mobile phone penetration is very high. I would love to learn more on this subject. thanks.

[Bacchus39]

12. I would estimate the cell phone, television, and radio are the three most common electronic devices

used in households regardless of income.

[Judi Lynn]

13. A pleasant evening to you, too. God bless you.

Here are some links I've posted before:

~snip~
opinion polls are unreliable in Colombia. Pollsters tend to reach only middle and upper class urban residents. Poor and rural Colombians, who tend to not have access to landlines or other standard survey methods, are rarely surveyed.

More:
http://thewip.net/contributors/2010/06/fundamental_change_in_colombia.html

~~~~~

~snip~
What is seldom understood about the vast majority of these polls is that the opinions are gathered through telephone interviews via landlines. This methodology is highly problematic for several reasons.

First, many Colombians do not have landlines. While cell-phone use is widespread in Colombia, simple infrastructures such as landlines are not. Not only villages and medium-sized towns, but also some major cities, lack the infrastructure to ensure even electricity on a daily basis, let alone fixed-line optical networks.

Second, interviewees can easily be identified through their landline status. This lack of anonymity inevitably counts against the expression of negative opinions of the president and government.

Third, polls such as the above claim to represent the opinions of a diverse range of Colombians from around the country, yet interviewees are frequently drawn only from the wealthier districts of Colombia’s four largest cities—Bogotá, Cali, Medellín, and Barranquilla. Unwarranted prominence is given to the views of a minute percentage of the population who have access to landlines. Since Uribe’s election as president, opinion polls in Colombia have focused on a handful of dominant urban centres, ignoring the countryside, where many of his most committed opponents live. As one media outlet so brazenly put it, “Colombian pollsters rarely survey the whole country because they consider responses in war-afflicted rural areas unreliable.”

More:
http://www.worlddialogue.org/content.php?id=433

~~~~~

~snip~
....the opinion polls so regularly quoted in both national and international media are suspect, being based on landline interviews with 1000 or so inhabitants of the four largest cities. In the context of widespread paramilitary terror it would be foolish to assume respondents being honest in a telephone interview with an unknown interlocutor. That most Colombians do not own landlines is another factor making these polls unreliable, according to the author, in addition to the fact that the polling companies refuse to poll in rural areas.

More:
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/ideas/2010/04/book-review-revolutionary-social-change-in-colombia-by-james-j-brittain/

~~~~~

~snip~
The polls are conducted only in the cities and using landline telephones. This eliminates many families in the lower stratas and all people in the pueblos and out in the country. The people who are polled are the ones who have most to win with Uribe's policies and who are constantly exposed to Uribe-supporting media. The polls are only showing that a 60% of those who are polled support Uribe....not that a 60% of the polutation as a WHOLE support Uribe...

More:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:T49fhagjpl4J:poorbuthappy.com/colombia/post/delegative-democracy-the-case-of-colombia1/+Colombia+polls+unreliable+poor+not+polled+no+phones+landlines&cd=6&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

~~~~~
Of course there would be others but I don't want to look for them, it's not necessary.

[naaman fletcher]

14. thank you

you have established that poor colombians do not have landlines.

[Judi Lynn]

15. Why would I say something like that if I hadn't read it repeatedly? I'm too busy to make stuff up.

Don't forget the subject was political polls.

When's the last time you got an opinion poll inquiry on your cell phone, anyway?

[naaman fletcher]

16. there is no reason its no do-able,

and is happening more and more here, even though i can not say it has happened to me

[Bacchus39]

17. yep, and there only one poll that really matters: the election

so while the polls were showing a dead even race in Colombia with Mockus, the polls were not accurate. if we assume that those with land lines are wealthier and the polls didn't capture the poor, then who was supporting Santos???

[gbscar]

18. None of the links mention that landlines are similarly limited in reach throughout Latin America

Colombia is far from unique in this respect. In fact, fixed line penetration in the country is fairly close to the regional average, as it can be easily established using the following information.

http://blog.euromonitor.com/2010/05/regional-focus-latin-america-enjoys-mobile-telephone-boom.html

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/latin-america-and-caribbean/telephone-lines-per-100-people-wb-data.html

http://ingles.colombiadigital.net/columnists/item/35-2000-2010-ten-years-of-revolution-in-telecommunications-in-colombia-1?tmpl=component&print=1

In other words, technically speaking it should be openly admitted that polling over the phone would have a similar structural limitation throughout the region, as opposed to being some sort of exclusively Colombian aberration.

Which, however, means that it would be far more interesting to read a detailed discussion of the specific methodology involved from a purely statistical perspective as opposed to simply scratching the surface of the issue and immediately reaching political conclusions.

For example, in addition to the previously mentioned fact that there are other forms of polling and that the countryside's demographic weight in Colombia has been dramatically reduced over the past decades, nothing is said in the linked articles about how pollsters actually do try to take into account the socio-economic strata of the landlines being called, even if this may not be enough to overcome other factors, as opposed to ignoring the issue altogether. Otherwise, one is basically forced to assumed that pollsters are uniformly incompetent or inherently evil by default. Hardly a fair representation, I'd think, even in the worst case scenario.

This, once again, doesn't mean those polls are completely reliable. No, they certainly aren't, but the simple fact that little or no effort has been made to properly address the other aspects of the subject beyond mere generalities does reduce the quality of any resulting debate.

[Bacchus39]

19. thanks for the info. and the polls showed Mockus at least tied or leading. who voted for Santos?

given your links stating that only landlines belonging to generally wealthier and urban dwellers were polled.



I would attribute Santos' overwhelming victory to Uribe even though Santos is currently charting his own course.

[Judi Lynn]

23. (United States info.) Pew: Growing Cell Phone Poll Bias Favors Republicans

Pew: Growing Cell Phone Poll Bias Favors Republicans
First Posted: 10-13-10 05:41 PM | Updated: 10-14-10 05:14 AM

Does it matter that many polls -- including the vast majority that we are currently watching at the state and congressional district level -- do not call Americans who use only a cell phone and thus lack landline telephone service? Yes it does. It creates a growing bias that appears to benefit Republican candidates. That's the message of a new analysis released this afternoon by the Pew Research Center.

Since 2006, a rapidly increasing percentage of American households lacks landline phone service. The most recent government estimates find that one in four American households is reachable by cell phone only. Pollsters have been reluctant to sample and call Americans on their cell phones, partly because it costs more and partly because federal law requires hand dialing any call placed to a cell phone, which makes such calls less efficient and puts cell phone polling off limits to automated survey methodologies.

For the last four years, the Pew Research Center has conducted public opinion surveys involving separate, parallel samples of both landline and mobile phones. Their design allows for a comparison between combined samples of landline and cell interviews and samples based only on landline calls.

Before the 2008 election, they found that calling only landline phones introduced a "small but real" bias in favor of John McCain, an average bias of 2.3 percentage points on the margin on nine national surveys conducted between June and October of that year.

More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/13/pew-research-cell-phone-p_n_761760.html

~~~~~
Want a Republican? Use a Landline. A Democrat? Call a Cell Phone.
6 months ago

~snip~
... the Pew Research Center's final study for this year of the disparities between those interviewed by landline and those interviewed by cell phone further bolster its earlier findings that landline-only samples of voters skew the results toward Republicans.

Analyzing three of its own polls during 2010, Republicans held a lead that was an average 5.1 points higher in the landline-only samples than in the surveys that combined landlines and cell phones.

Pew said that in its final pre-election poll, the landline-only sample of likely voters put the Republicans ahead on the generic congressional ballot by 51 percent to 39 percent, but that lead fell to 48 percent to 42 percent when cell phone users were included in the sample. While the official figures are not yet final, the Republican margin in the national House vote ended up being about 7 points.

~snip~
Pew found that young people reached by cell phone differ politically from young people reached by landline.
Democrats had a 53 percent to 38 percent lead over Republicans among registered voters under 30 in Pew surveys this year that included both landline and cell phone users. But when it came to just those reached by landline, the Democratic edge fell from 49 percent to 45 percent.
One final note from Pew's findings: "Voter registration is lowest among those with only a cell phone -- just 60 percent are registered voters."

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/11/22/want-a-republican-use-a-landline-a-democrat-call-a-cell-phone/

~~~~~
Polling FAQ

~snip~
Do pollsters call cell phones?
No. It is illegal for them to do so. This fact means that people who have only a cell phone and no land line will be systematically excluded from polls. Since these people tend to be mostly young people, the pollsters intentionally overweight the 18-30 year olds to compensate for this effect, but as more people drop their landlines, it is becoming a serious issue. Here is a report on the issue and below is a graph taken from the report.

http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2008/Info/polling-faq.html

~~~~~
Posted on Monday, October 18, 2010
Beware of polls that exclude cell phone-only voters

~snip~
Who are these cell phone-only people? According to the National Center for Health Statistics:
•The young: 49 percent of those aged 25-29, and 38 percent of those aged 18-24.
•The less educated: 25 percent of those with high school educations or less, the most wireless group.
•Students: 29 percent of people who go to school.
•Hispanics: 30 percent, the most wireless of any race or ethnicity, with African-Americans at 25 percent and non-Hispanic whites at 21 percent.
•The poor: 36 percent.
•Renters, 43 percent.

~snip~
Calling cell phones for a poll is more challenging and expensive than calling land lines.

First, Miringoff said, Federal Election Commission regulations require that they be dialed manually. Second, a questioner has to ask whether the person is driving or using heavy equipment. A "yes" answer requires a follow-up call later. Third, a high percentage of people with cell phones are younger than 18 and unable to vote. Fourth, more people refuse to answer the calls because they must pay for the air time; often pollsters compensate them, further driving up costs.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/10/18/102226/beware-of-polls-that-exclude-cell.html

[gbscar]

4. The thing is, Uribe's "fascism" wasn't limited to repression but also included RW populism

That's not to say all the bloody repression plays no role, but it's important to understand there was something more to his strategy at the same time. Which, ironically, actually makes it worse than what you're describing. There are probably far more poor Uribistas than you think.

The idea that the vast majority of poor Colombians couldn't possibly have developed or acquired any misguided right-wing inclinations but are socio-politically left-wing at heart and are all just waiting for the chance to express their socialist beliefs once repression disappears...is a superficially attractive one, from a certain ideological perspective, but the alternative is considerably worse and shouldn't be ignored.

In other words, intimidation may well be a lesser evil when compared to the effects of Uribe's propaganda among the desperate and the less educated. Which, taking into account historical precedent, isn't hard to believe.

Hitler himself, of all people, may not have been as universally loved as the Nazis wanted to pretend. Yet he was certainly incredibly popular until the tide of war turned against him. He didn't rule through fear alone, you know, despite repressing dissent. There were many poor Germans and others who voluntarily accepted him or, at best, were content to join the bandwagon. All other differences aside, a similar principle also applies in this case.

For example, Uribe spent a lot of time cultivating the idea that certain government subsidies to the poor, such as the Familias in Acción program, were tied to his person and his brand of politics. No doubt some resources never reached the poor because of corruption, sure, but the greater problem is...what happened to those that did? I believe it's necessary to take this into consideration instead of dismissing the matter.

To say nothing about traditional clientelism and machine politics in general, including the act of selling or buying a vote in exchange for money or some other form of aid. It's sad to say, but there are many poor Colombians who prefer voting for someone who gives them something "concrete" in exchange, in spite of being rather petty, even if that doesn't structurally change or improve their overall socio-economic situation for good.

I believe there was a study from a few years back conducted or at least supported by CINEP, a human rights NGO, which also concluded that the urban poor were far more pro-Uribe than the rural poor...and, contrary to popular perceptions among the left, many of his critics belonged to the middle class and up, not the middle class and down. Repression aside, those who are better educated are also likely to be more critical.

On a very related note...demographically speaking, the vast majority of the poor in Colombia are urban as opposed to rural by this point in history. Displacement, among other things, has only accelerated the process but it's a long term trend and one that has had both intended and unintended effects.

Finally, it's also worth mentioning there have been several polls conducted in Colombia through direct personal interviews, though they tend to be comparatively rare outside of electoral season because they're simply more expensive than conducting them over the phone. In other words, not all polls are telephone-based if you actually look for them. Doesn't mean they are perfectly representative but they do exist.

Once again, I actually think things would be better if Uribe wasn't popular at all and Uribism was a completely illusory phenomenon with no other kind of underlying basis, but I fear that may not be quite true, for these and other reasons.

--------

As for Mr. Ortega, let's just say I was more of a fan of the original Sandinista rebellion and the movement founded in its name than of his current administration. Unfortunately, I'll also admit my knowledge of Nicaragua is limited to begin with and, in the end, it's certainly not up to me to decide who should rule that country. For the record, however, I didn't unrecommend this post in case anyone jumps to that conclusion.

[EFerrari]

5. Hi there, gbscar.

I agree with you about Ortega and my information is limited as well.

[naaman fletcher]

6. Theoretically speaking,

the problem with a poll by secret ballot is that while people answer more honestly, it is harder to control for random events.

Let's look at a hypothetical scenario.

There are 1000 people on an island. We know from election after election that there are roughly 40% who vote for one party, and 40% who vote for the other, and 20% in between.

So, we poll them. We decide to poll 100 people. Let's say that in the poll we should of course get a sample size that is consistent with the general population, however there is a chance that you don't. So in this poll of 100 people, 90 of them plan to vote for candidate A. Because you know who they are, and weather therefore they have voted in the past, and what neighborhood they live in, you can get a better idea of weather 90% really are going to vote for candidate A, or you had a bad sample.

In the United States we generally know of course what proportion of people are in what party, what proportion of them vote, etc. When a politically biased firm is paid by a candidate to generate a poll, they will play games and skew their calling patterns and such so as to wind up polling a greater number of the party they want to poll.

Anyway, I am not at all dissing this idea of the secret poll, am just pointing out one problem with it.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Hard to believe a Democrat would unrec. a thread about a democratically elected president. n/t

[naaman fletcher]

10. Hard to believe a democrat

would be so clueless about the common people he/she claims to identify with.

[Peace Patriot]

20. Sorry, Judi Lynn ain't the clueless one, NF. She is one of the best informed and most informative

bloggers at DU. For instance, she just provided SIX sources on phone availability to the poor in Colombia, off the top of her head.

You mostly just offer your opinions in short posts, and those opinions are so often RW/corporate I can only presume that you form your opinions on the basis of the highly biased, often distorted, often lying corpo-fascist press.

Judi Lynn, on the other hand, seeks out, finds and posts alternative information, so that those of us who want to can compare and contrast all the corpo-fascist articles posted by RWers here at DU with other information, and form our own opinions.

Frankly, I think you're just trying to dis her cuz she was so fast with pertinent info on phone availability to the poor in Colombia-- a typical rightwing response, to hurl insults in the face of actual information.

It's also quite typical of the RW to make accusations that are projections. "Clueless." Out of touch with "the common people." WHO is clueless? WHO is out of touch with "the common people"?

[naaman fletcher]

21. thats absurd

YOu are very well informed. Simply parroting a few blogs is not well informed.

1. I provided the actual information quicker than she did.

2. She is the one who endlessly hurls insults.

[gbscar]

22. Not going to get involved in the personal attacks here, but I do believe there is room for debate...

...even after alternative information has been posted. Thus, while it is indeed worth acknowledging the usefulness of providing links and relevant information quickly, as Judi Lynn regularly does, it's also a shame that there seems to be a little too much hostility in the environment and, as a result, a very limited amount of actual discussion even after additional points have been made.

In this particular case, alternative sources of information should also be scrutinized. Most of the sources tend to skirt around the issue of providing any statistics for landline use and directly comparing them to those elsewhere in the region. Is a poor person in Colombia more or less likely to have access to landlines than a poor person in Ecuador, Brazil, Nicaragua or Venezuela? What about the differences between the urban and rural poor? If I were to just go by what those six sources say, these questions wouldn't have an answer. But I feel that in order to understand what does this actually mean and what are its ramifications, at least suggesting a comparative approach seems entirely reasonable.

In addition, a couple of sources are essentially citing themselves and/or the same person. It doesn't make them useless but, like in the case of mainstream and corporate media, what they fail to mention or highlight because of this can also turn out to be important.

It's certainly better to bring up the concept of limitations in the use of landline phones among the poor instead of taking opinion polls at face value, making this a pertinent and relevant factor in light of the topic, but there is more to the subject in and of itself.