Reuters tells us that “The decline in oil prices has slammed his [Nicolas Maduro’s] increasingly cash-strapped and unpopular government in the midst of a deep recession and ahead of important parliamentary elections.”
Oil prices have recovered somewhat since January, so saying “increasingly cash-strapped” – if it refers to government export revenues – is wrong.
The claim that the government is “unpopular” is based on widely cited Datanalisis polls. Reuters should know better, given the track record of pollsters in Venezuela, than to report anyone’s findings – especially with elections far off – as if they were fact.
Two pro-government websites have just reported a poll that claimed the government would win elections if held today. However, the election won’t happen until December of 2015– a lifetime away in electoral terms, so pollsters can say a lot of things without fear of embarrassing themselves. Moreover, in Venezuela, many pollsters have embarrassed themselves (including Datanalisis in 2004) with elections imminent.
Pollsters don’t have to engage in blatant fraud to skew their results (either in favor of whom they like or who is paying them). Les Roberts, an epidemiologist who used sophisticated polling methods in Iraq to make mortality estimates, once explained that something as subtle as whether or not researchers approach people wearing lab coats can impact results.
During the coup/oil strike period of 2002/2003, the international press was full of reports that Chavez’s support had dropped to 30%. It is far from certain that those poll numbers were accurate given the 16 point Chavista victory in the 2004 recall referendum.
Similarly, after Maduro was elected in April of 2013, Datanalisis said the government’s popularity dropped precipitously but then recovered enough to produce a decisive defeat of the opposition in the municipal elections in December of 2013. Possibly, or maybe the drop in popularity between those two elections was not nearly as big as what Datanalisis claimed. In the absence of election results, no “ideal” pollster is going to drop down from the sky and give us a definitive answer.
If elections are imminent, one can look at how well various pollsters have done in predicting past elections and factor that in to get a much better idea of where voters are likely to stand. Days before the presidential election of October 2012, CEPR did that kind of analysis. Had the international press done so, it would not have wildly overestimated Capriles’ chances against Hugo Chavez.
ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.
Donate