Of dodgy pollsters and strategic leaks

Of dodgy pollsters and strategic leaks

• 5,9 million registered to vote in Zimbabwe

• Opposition groups raise alarm over voters' roll

• Mugabe amends electoral laws, police get role

• ANC tells Zimbabwe security forces to stay out of vote

• SADC confident of free elections in Zimbabwe

• Polling station row spills into High Court

• 1 vote every 9 seconds: the scandal of the March 29 elections

• Moyo predicts chaos on March 29

• Zim shuts door on western election obsevers

• Gwanda South, Mpopoma polls to be postponed

• 'No cardboard ballot boxes for Zim poll' - ZEC

• Cardboard ballot boxes to be used in polls

• US concerns over Zimbabwe elections

• Ambassador McGee: Building democracy - the responsibilities of the electorate

• Britain wants international observers for poll

• Moyo furious with MDC challenge

• Mugabe could facer second round of voting - Moyo

• List of 2008 parliamentary and senatorial candidates

• Ncube, Khupe stake political careers on Makokoba

• Mugabe faces defiance as officials haggle over seats

• Mutambara withdraws from race, backs Makoni

• Die is cast as presidential candidates file nomination papers

• Pahad says elections 'last chance to save Zim'

• Eye Witness: Let's challenge eletoral process, not the outcome

• Odds against free and fair elections - Britain

• Confusion reigns as nomination court sitting postponed

• Zimbabwe opens voters' roll for inspection

• Madhuku warns MDC against poll boycott

• Mugabe plunges opposition into new election dillemma: analysts

• Mugabe calls elections for March 29

By Trudy Stevenson, MP

I WAS interested to see the "leaked results" of the Mass Public Opinion Institute - MPOI - survey regarding who would win the Presidential election this year.

I have known MPOI since my dear late friend and colleague Professor Masipula Sithole set up the Institute some years ago.

In Mas's day, we could trust results from this institute to be a genuine reflection of whatever question was being surveyed.

Unfortunately, since then the Institute seems to have lost some of its impartiality, perhaps because one particular political party has its headquarters only two buildings away, at Harvest House.

My skepticism of the survey results published on Studio 7 and in the Zimbabwe Independent last week is based on the fact that in 2005 MPOI conducted a survey and then kept the result secret "because some of your top people didn't like it" in the words of Professor Eldred Masunungure, Director of MPOI.

The survey conducted then was a snap survey in Harare on the issue of the forthcoming Senate election. The question was whether people were in favour of MDC participating in that election. This survey was taken in September, 2005, one month before the disastrous split of the MDC over this issue.

Prof Masunungure told me, on the fringe of another encounter in early 2006, that some 75% of respondents in Harare were in favour of participating the Senate election, and that this is what "some of your top people" were not happy about. MPOI therefore suppressed that result, and the entire world was allowed to come under the impression that Zimbabweans as a whole rejected the Senate project.

This impression was false - and Morgan Tsvangirai's sudden volte face in August to reject anything to do with the Senate (when in March and April he was promising people Senate seats) was publicly supported by MPOI's silence on their findings.

So now we have MPOI declaring that Morgan Tsvangirai will win the Presidential election, with Mugabe coming second and Makoni third, while over 30% of voters still keep their vote their secret.

Since more than 30% of respondents would not say which presidential candidate they would vote for, and since even Tsvangirai got less than 30%, I do not believe this poll to be a very reliable indicator of the actual election result. Was it leaked to campaign for Tsvangirai?

Trudy Stevenson is MP for Harare North constituency and the secretary on local government for the MDC faction led by Arthur Mutambara
JOIN THE DEBATE ON THIS ARTICLE ON THE NEWZIMBABWE.COM FORUMS
newsdesk@newzimbabwe.com