Yes, This means Ahmadinejad Won the Election
February 5th, 2010 § 4 Comments
Quick question: what do confused sectors of the Western radical left and the editorial board of the New York Times agree about? That last June’s Iranian presidential election, which almost certainly was not fraudulent, was fraudulent, that Ahmadinejad is not the legitimately elected president of Iran, that to analyze or criticize the tactics or ideologies of the green movement is tantamount to Stalinism, and that the correct political stance vis-a-vis the green movement is posting YouTube videos of protesters pummeling working-class basij.
For the NYT, this is a matter of massaging reality so as to prepare the symbolic ground for imperial warfare and destabilization. For the Empire, an independent nuclear-capable Iran is haram (forbidden). A state of suicide bombers armed with fissile material? Oh hell no. Muslims can barely be relied upon to refrain from building minarets or misogynistically controlling their women, in stark contrast to the courageous feminism that permeates the West. The repressed men of The Muslim World would almost certainly manifest their frustration in Armageddon if they got remotely near a nuclear weapon, and the West–lily-white pure when it comes to visiting Armageddon upon other people–could not possibly tolerate such a frightening prospect.
Anyway, put to the side the tactical question of where Western leftists should orient their efforts–unremittingly against sanctions, clearly, which are option one in the rejectionistist imperial armory. (Putting this political question aside is slightly ridiculous since it’s actually the only relevant issue right now for leftists or liberals). And then move on to some poll analysis that should seal shut the debate about Ahmadinejad’s social support–a proxy for Iranian sentiment concerning populist economic policies. This is something I harp about with abrasive frequency. When American leftists have no movement–like right now–we look around for something distractingly beguiling. In this case, something so inchoate and that pulls in so many directions that it makes it easy to impose our revolutionary hopes upon a non-revolutionary situation.
Yes, millions mobilized as part of the Green Wave in June and more recently during Ashura. The green movement is real. But here’s the problem. The Iranian state is strong, deeply-embedded in civil society through a range of social welfare programs, many of them directed towards the rural poor, others benefiting the urban lower-classes. And the Iranian government, extending well beyond Ahmadinejad, is also repressive and anti-democratic. Repressive and anti-democratic governments frequently provoke backlashes in favor of democracy. And sometimes, those backlashes redound negatively upon the working-classes. Sometimes authoritarianism brings prosperity. This stuff is fairly obvious and banal, but debate on Iran tends to cliche, train-wrecked syllogism, and the crafting of straw-men, so sometimes it’s helpful to pedantically lay out the obvious, which I do by way of massively elliptical introduction to a poll from WorldPublicOpinion. Its gist? Iranians may not like their government but they do think Ahmadinejad is their legitimately elected president. The reason a majority of Iranians voted for him? Probably because his government is perceived, more-or-less rightly, as one in favor of economic populism within a global neo-liberal regime of accumulation. My thinking? So long as the Green Movement fails to braid together economic redistribution and political liberalism, it will not gain the crucial societal mass that will enable it to become a force capable of restructuring the Iranian state so as to enable it to defend the Iranian people from both the economic and military arms of the Empire. Traditionally, defense of economic redistribution and fighting the empire were the concerns of radicals, dissidents, and socialists. So were facts. In modern times, not so much.
Indications of fraud in the June 12 Iranian presidential election, together with large-scale street demonstrations, have led to claims that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did not actually win the election, and that the majority of Iranians perceive their government as illegitimate and favor regime change.
An analysis of multiple polls of the Iranian public from three different sources finds little evidence to support such conclusions.
The analysis conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland (PIPA), was based on:
- a series of 10 recently-released polls conducted by the University of Tehran; eight conducted in the month before the June 12 election and two conducted in the month after the election, based on telephone interviews conducted within Iran
- a poll by GlobeScan conducted shortly after the election, based on telephone interviews conducted within Iran
- a poll by WorldPublicOpinion.org (managed by PIPA) conducted August 27–September 10, based on telephone interviews made by calling into Iran
The study sought to address the widely-discussed hypotheses that Ahmadinejad did not win the June 12 election and that the Iranian people perceive their government as illegitimate. It also sought to explore the assumption that the opposition represents a movement favoring a substantially different posture toward the United States. The analysis of the data found little evidence to support any of these hypotheses.
Steven Kull, director of PIPA, said, “Our analysis suggests that it would not be prudent to base US policy on the assumption that the Iranian public is in a pre-revolutionary state of mind.”
On the question of whether Ahmadinejad won the June 12 election, in the week before the election and after the election, in all polls a majority said they planned to or did vote for Ahmadinejad. These numbers ranged from 52 to 57% immediately before the election and 55 to 66% after the election.
Steven Kull comments, “These findings do not prove that there were no irregularities in the election process. But they do not support the belief that a majority rejected Ahmadinejad.”
The analysis did reveal factors that could have contributed to the impression that Ahmadinejad did not win. University of Tehran polls show that in the first few weeks of the campaign his support dropped precipitously and he did not enjoy majority support in the city of Tehran. But in the week before the election, his support recovered outside the capital.
Going into the election 57% said they expected Ahmadinejad to win. Thus it is not surprising that, in several post-election polls, more than seven in ten said they saw Ahmadinejad as the legitimate president. About eight in ten said the election was free and fair.
The polls did reveal some reservations about the government. Less than a majority expressed full confidence in the Guardian Council (42%) and the Ministry of the Interior (38%). While over eight in ten said they were satisfied with the current system of government, in June less than a majority (49%) said they were very satisfied and this number dropped to 41% in July.
However none of the polls found indications of support for regime change. Large majorities, including majorities of Mousavi supporters, endorse the Islamist character of the regime such as having a body of Islamic scholars with the power to veto laws they see as contrary to sharia.
To address the possibility that the data collected within Iran may have been fabricated, PIPA compared the patterns of responses, including within subgroups, in data collected inside Iran to those collected by calling into Iran from the outside. Steven Kull comments, “The patterns of responses at many levels are so similar, whether the data was collected inside Iran or by calling into Iran, that it is hard to conclude that these data were fabricated.”
Another concern is that Iranian respondents were not answering candidly out of fear of some type of reprisal for making statements in support of the opposition or critical of the regime, particularly in the post-election environment. As noted above, on some questions majorities expressed views that were less than fully laudatory of the government.
Still there was the fact that after the election, the numbers expressing support for Mousavi diminished suggests that some self-censoring may have been occurring. Thus PIPA put special emphasis on analyzing the responses of those who felt bold enough to say that they voted for the opposition on the assumption that they would be frank on other issues as well. While Mousavi supporters are less affirmative of the legitimacy of the regime than the public as a whole, still a majority says that they believe that Ahmadinejad is the legitimate president and affirm the Islamist nature of the regime.
Some analysts have suggested that if the opposition were to gain power this would lead to fundamental changes in the Iranian posture toward the US. Focusing on those respondents who said they voted for Mousavi, as an approximation of the opposition, PIPA found that a majority were ready to negotiate with the US on a number of issues, while the Iranian public as a whole was more divided. However, Mousavi supporters, like the general public, were quite negative in their views of the US government and were strongly committed to Iran’s nuclear program.
A majority of Mousavi supporters did favor diplomatic relations with the US, and were ready to make a deal whereby Iran would preclude developing nuclear weapons through intrusive international inspections in exchange for the removal of sanctions. However, this was equally true of the majority of all Iranians.
Full Report (PDF)
Questionnaire with Findings, Methodology for All Three Surveys (PDF)WPO Dataset for Download (SPSS Format)
GlobeScan Dataset for Download (SPSS Format)
[Thanks Yoshie]
prepare for the incoming hate…
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I suspect that author of the above will be interested in
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Just published: AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FORMER COMMUNIST
Please share this link with those who might be interested.
go to http://WWW.AMAZON.COM and search for Ludwik Kowalski
or
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P.S. The book is waiting for a reviewer
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“…that to analyze or criticize the tactics or ideologies of the green movement is tantamount to Stalinism…”
Make that ‘Hitlerism’. Most of the Lefties I know are ambivalent about Stalin. Yeah, he murdered Trotsky (and several million others), but he bore most of the load in the defeat of Nazism in Europe.
My printed book promoted above (2/6/2010) did not sell very well, even after good reviews appeared on amazon.com
That is why I decided to make it available at no cost. Here is how I am now promoting the modified book:
Dear colleagues,
1) As per our previous correspondence, I want you to know about my new book. Anyone can now read it ONLINE. And it is FREE.
The URL is
http://csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/life/intro.html
2) Please share this URL with all who might be interested. Thank you in advance.
The title is: “Diary of a Former Communist: Thoughts, Feelings, Reality.”
This 2010 book is my autobiography. It is based on a diary I kept between 1946 and 2004 (in the USSR, Poland, France and the USA).
3) Comments, as always, will be appreciated. I expect my book to be readable by all browsers and under all operating systems. (Please send me a private message immediately if the content is not clearly displayed on your computer screen.)
Ludwik Kowalski
Professor Emeritus
Montclair State University (USA)
kowalskiL@mail.montclair.edu