On Jun 14, 2009, at 10:53 PM, Michael Pollak wrote:
> On Sun, 14 Jun 2009, Robert Naiman of Just Foreign Policy
>> <www.justforeignpolicy.org> was quoted saying:
>
>> But the evidence that has been presented so far that the election was
>> stolen has not been convincing....
>
> <snip>
>
>> The poll was conducted between May 11 and May 20
>
> A month ago! All the other polls changed drastically in the last
> month.
>
> There's data problems no matter what you try, but extrapolating this
> elaborately from a single poll with no track record is always a
> mug's game. And when you add that it's from a month ago in this
> context, it just seems silly. This doesn't have any more
> credibility than a streetcorner sample; maybe less.
But the actual results, which Yoshie posted on MRZine, are much more ambiguous:
<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/iran110609.html>
> 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.
>
> ...
>
> The current mood indicates that none of the candidates will likely
> pass the 50 percent threshold needed to automatically win; meaning
> that a second round runoff between the two highest finishers, as
> things stand, Mr. Ahmadinejad and Mr. Moussavi, is likely. In the
> 2005 Presidential elections, the leader in the first round, Hashemi
> Rafsanjani, lost to his runner-up, Mr. Ahmadinejad, in the second
> round run off -- though an incumbent has never been defeated in a
> Presidential election since the beginning of the Islamic Republic.