20645: Orenstein re USAID Gallup poll - resonding to 20575: Morrell: Re: 20550: Hess: gallup poll (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: katie orenstein <katie@orenstein.com>

James Morrell summarizes his notes about the USAID-sponsored Gallup Poll of
2002, as discussed in an Inter-American Dialogue conference in Washington,
in Nov 2002.  Morrell writes:

snip:
> The gist was that support for Aristide had dropped from
> a majority in May 2001 to teens or single digits by  the
> second half of 2002. The American official cited those
> results to urge the Democratic Convergence representatives
> present at the conference to take the electoral route
> given their improved prospects.


This is not at all the gist of the poll, a copy of which I have in my files.
Since there's been so much speculation about this poll, I'll transcribe a
few graphs, below:

FIRST PAGE:

"CID/Gallup was commissioned by U.S.A.I.D. to conduct two Public Opinion
Polls during the calendar year 2002. The results presented in this document
pertain to the first of these polls, having been carried out between March
1st and March 8th, 2002."

"A total of 1,204 interviews were conducted among Haitian adults 18 years of
age or older in a demographically representative sample of the entire adult
population. The geograhic scope of the study is the entire country, with few
exception. Interviews took palce in the home of the respondent, not more
than one interview per household."

SNIP (WHAT FOLLOWS IS FROM CID'S ANALYSIS OF POLL RESULTS)

" * Approximately one out of three Haitian adults associates him- or herself
with the Fanmi Lavalas (FL) political party.  Sympathies for the FL party
are strongest outside of Port-au-Prince, among women, and among those with
less than a university level education.
*  No other political party comes close to the support enjoyed by Fanmi
Lavalas.  Konverjans places a distant second, mentioned by eight percent of
the populace as their political party. Its support is concentrated among
young and well educated respondents.
*  Notably, the support for Fanmi Lavalas appears to be waning, maybe as a
direct impact of the increasingly widespread discontent with the ruling
government and the state of the economy.
*  Jean Bertrand Aristide remains the country's most popular political
figure, even though the percentage of citizens who have a "favorable"
opinion of hims has droppsed significantly in the past year.  Aristide's
popularity returns to a pre-electoral level, as observed in November of
1999.
*  Two other public figures suffer important declines in the number of
"favorable" opinions that they receive:  Gerard Gourgue and Jean-Marie
Cherestal. The former, Gourgue, who has played a public role in opposition
of the Aristide government, receives in March of 2002 one-third the number
of "favorable" opinions as he did just ten months ago.
*  Of all the public figures who have been evaluated in both of the last two
measurements, Myrlande Manigat shows the greatest increase in the number of
"favorable opinions" that she receives--six percentage points.
*  Notwithstanding his poor job rating, the current president of Haiti,
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, receives favorable opinions from half of the
population.  The principal reasons they give are that he is "close to the
people" and that he has "willpower."
*  Two out of five respondents view Aristide unfavorabley, mostly because
they consider his government "corrupt," that he is "untrustworthy," that he
"doesn't do anything" or that he "does not keep his promises."