Bashir ahead in electronic opinon poll
In an opinion poll conducted by the Sudanile website the incumbent President of the republic, Omar El Bashir, is ahead of Yassir Arman (SPLM) and the Imam Sadiq Al Mahdi (National Umma Party)e. The great advance of Bashir and Arman over Mahdi has raised many questions, especially so since the latter led the poll in the first days, before Bashir rose up. Mahdi could not even hold the second position that he had been predicted to achieve. Arman came in second after Bashir. This outcome has led some to speculate that supporters of Bashir and Arman had used dishonest means, such as voting multiple times, in order to turn the result of the poll around.
Internet polls on presidential candidates were started by the France-based (but English-speaking) Sudan Tribune website. Later on, Sudanile (self-described as an independent Khartoum-based online newspaper) hosted two similar polls. The Sudan Tribune poll (which was taken down later) showed Mahdi in the first place, followed by Arman and then Bashir. Some have speculated the poll was taken down because the results shocked the secularist site administrators. The result showed a traditionalist Islamic leader (Mahdi) overtaking a politician (Arman), and this at a website whose visitors are not supposed to prefer traditionalist leaders, especially Islamic ones.
Sudanile conducted two polls. The second was a follow-up round with only the three contestants who got the most votes in the first poll. In the first poll, over 20 thousand people participated. Bashir came first, with 49%, Arman second, with 20%, and Mahdi third, with 16%. The remaining candidates were far behind. Leading up the rear was Muhammed Ibrahim Nugud Secretary General of the Communist Party (6%), followed by the Democratic Unionist Party candidate Hatem Al Ser (4%). Mubarak Al Fadil (the candidate of the Umma Party for Reform & Renewal) and the independent candidate Kamil Idris both got 1% each. Abdullah Deng Nhial, the candidate of the islamist Popular Congress, scored only 0.6%. Abdul Aziz Khalid got 0.3%. The independent candidate Mahmoud Ahmed Juha came in last with only 0.2%.
In the first Sudanile poll, any visitor could vote as many times as he/she wanted to. The feature disallowing multiple votes from the same machine had not yet been introduced. Sudanile used that feature in the second poll, which had 40 thousand participants and lasted a mere two days. It was taken down after only two days because the huge numbers of visitors to that page which was affecting and causing outages in other parts of the site. In the second poll, Bashir came first with 42%, Mahdi second with 32%, and Arman third with 20%.
Many people question the credibility of electronic opinion polls. Apart from the possibility of one person voting for a particular candidate more than once, whether from the same computer or from others, it is argued that the population segment covered by the internet surveys is limited in Sudan (estimated at 4% to 10% maximum). In statistics and opinion polls, a simple, generally accepted principle is dividing the population into segments based on appropriate principles, such as age, education, profession, geography, etc., taking into account that the samples should reflect all those segments, as well as calculating an estimated statistical error ratio upon which the results are processed by specific methods.
Dr. Haitham Hassan, head of the Sudanese Association for Opinion Studies says that the results of these surveys are of little credibility. In addition to the possibility of repeated voting, few Sudanese use the Internet. He adds that electronic polls are accurate in the West because of the large base of Internet users and targeting multiple population segments, unlike in Sudan. The group had conducted a survey following the issuance of an arrest warrant against President Bashir, showing that his public approval rate stood at 91%. A similar survey conducted by Al-Jazeera Channel had given President Bashir 96%.
Reliance on the accuracy of such polls to measure public opinion trends in Sudan might not be possible. Dr. Mohammed Mahjub Harun, professor of political psychology, says that they reflect opinion trends in a small segment and do not represent the opinion of the majority of the Sudanese people. He adds that any survey should fulfill scientific requirements. The research samples should enable accurate access to the electorate. In addition, the survey must be conducted by people with moral and professional credibility.
Those electronic polls could serve as indicators of opinion trends among internet users, according to Tariq Jizouli, Sudanile executive editor. He adds that his goal behind the survey was to discover the major presidential candidates. Jizouli admits that dishonest practices might have accompanied the survey, but he says that he was not able to prevent those who wanted to vote twice from doing so. The most he could do was preventing them from voting again on the same computer. He thinks that the results of his survey are useful to public opinion and to the parties in particular.
Politicians themselves are conducting their own surveys. Some talk about polls conducted by the National Congress Party in specific areas and a poll attributed to the opposition, where Al-Bashir got 44% and Mahdi got 29%. This result is not very different from the initial analysis and expectations. However, Sudanese surveys do not seem similar to those carried out abroad. Abroad, polls sometimes award the elections in advance in favor of one candidate head and shoulders above competitors. Numbers and results of electronic surveys are indeed closer to speculation, and we have to wait for ballot boxes to be opened and for the votes to be counted, to determine whether the winner is Bashir, Sadiq, or Arman, or maybe some other candidate contrary to all expectations.
