Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Jordanian Public Opinion on Syrian conflict: war of numbers

There is a new public opinion survey of Jordanian attitudes toward the Syrian conflict. It is by far the most comprehensive of its kind.  What it reveals is that Jordanians are actually divided over the Syrian conflict: "45% of respondents believe that what is happening in Syria is a revolution against a regime, while 41% believe that is actually a foreign conspiracy against Syria".  And 57% of respondents beleive that the Syrian opposition is "linked to foreign countries".  Only 5% support foreign intervention in Syria.  And 54% of respondents believe that the best solution is a change of president and government (hukumah could be government or cabinet in Arabic).   Curiously, Aljazeera had published a poll of Jordanian conducted by the Qatar-based Arab Center Research and Policy Studies which claimed that 82% of Jordanian public opinion believe that the best solution in Syria is the departure of the Syrian regime.  And the actual report by that center maintains that 35% of Jordanians characterize what is happening in Syria as a foreign conspiracy versus 56% who characterize the Syrian developments as a popular revolution against the regime.  Most cursiously, Al-Quds Al-`Arabis reported on the new Jordanian poll but suppressed the key finding to focus on the 54% who believed that the departure of Asad and his government are the best solution.  They did not publish anything on Jordanian divisions and on the characterization of the developments in Syria.  But they did publish the finding that only 5% support foreign intervention in Syria.  Still, compare those numbers with the numbers of a Pew poll on the same subject which claimed that 89% of Jordanians want Asad to step down--a figure that does not match the other figures.  Shockingly, Pew Poll claimed that 48% of Jordanian support foreign intervention.  That figure really raises doubts about the reliability of the Pew Poll (which I criticized on another matter recently).