Ramifications of Rouhani's Re-election

University of Maryland CISSM has published its most recent study based on three nationally representative surveys that were conducted in Iran by IranPoll for the University of Maryland. CISSM was responsible for designing the questionnaires, getting feedback on them from relevant policy experts and practitioners, performing the analysis, and putting together the final report. 

IranPoll fielded the first poll in Dec. 2016, the other in the middle of Iran’s presidential election campaigns in May 2017, and the third just recently after the soon after the terrorist attacks in Tehran. The first poll with a sample size of 1,015, was conducted May 8–11, 2017, a week before Iran’s presidential election. The other, with a sample size of 1,004, was conducted June 11–17, 2017, a week after the terror attacks in Tehran.

The study covers a wide range of issues. The study shows that an overwhelming majority of Iranians are likely to find a bill similar to the new sanctions bill that was just passed in the U.S. house of representative to be at odds with U.S. obligations under the nuclear agreement (see Q13). It also shows that while Iranians are still optimistic about the nuclear deal their country negotiated with the P5+1 countries two years ago, they would support a form of retaliation if President Trump decides to abrogate the agreement.

The study looks at Iran’s May 2017 presidential election as well. It shows that Rouhani’s victory was not a given and that he could have faced a much stronger challenge if opponents behaved differently. The poll also covers other issues including Iran’s involvement in the conflicts in Syria and Iraq.

The analytical report of this study could be accessed here.

Main Findings:

The following charts have been produced by CISSM.

Live C-SPAN Coverage:

C-SPAN 3 is covering this poll live:

Media Coverage:

Below are links to the articles covering this poll:

Pre-election results (16 May 2017)

IranPoll is proud of providing the most accurate prediction of the outcome of Iran’s May 2017 presidential election. Our prediction from May 16, 2017 (3 days before the election), was published by The Economist in an interview with Dr. Amir Farmanesh CEO of People Analytics (IranPoll) about 20 hours before the initial official results were declared. 

On May 20, 2017, Iran's Ministry of Interior officially declared that Rouhani had won 57% and Raisi had won 38% of the cast ballots. Our prediction was less than 2 percentage points away from the officially declared results.

IranPoll is now releasing further polling results from the poll conducted on May 16, 2017 prior the Iranian presidential election. The study is based on a telephone poll among a representative sample of 1,007 Iranians. The margin of error is about +/- 3.09%.

Questions in this survey include:  

• Q1. Please say the degree to which you have a favorable or an unfavorable view of:

  • A- Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf

  • B- Hassan Rouhani

  • C- Seyyed Ebrahim Raisi

  • D. Eshagh Jahangiri

  • E. Mostafa Mirsalim

  • F. Mostafa Hashemi Taba

  • G. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

  • H- Mohammad Javad Zarif

  • I- General Qasem Soleymani

• Q3. If the election was to be held tomorrow, which one of following candidates would you be most likely to vote for?

• Q4. If only Rouhani and Raisi remain in the race, who would you vote for?

• Q5. Now assume that Ghalibaf had remained and, instead, Raisi would have left the race in favor of Ghalibaf. Also assume that other candidates besides Rouhani and Ghalibaf would also leave the race. In that case, who would you have been most likely to vote for? Rouhani or Ghalibaf?

• Q6. Regardless of whether you are going to vote or not and your personal views about the candidates, which of the following candidates do you think will ultimately win?

RESULTS:

The full report with frequency tables is available in PDF form here. 

Post-election Analysis of Polling Accuracy

Like most polling agencies, majority of polls conducted by IranPoll is owned by clients. However, IranPoll did publicize two rounds of polling results before the Iranian 2017 presidential election which was held on May 19th 2017.

This short summary is aimed to analyze the accuracy of IranPoll’s latest publicly available polling results for that election, which was conducted on May 16th 2017, and was published in an interview with Dr. Amir Farmanesh CEO of People Analytics (IranPoll) in The Economist on May 19th 2017 available here.

The following graph is made by The Economist using IranPoll’s data:

View fullsize

The actual results of the presidential election as reported by the Iranian Ministry of Interior was 57.14% for Hassan Rouhani and 38.28% for Ebrahim Raisi.

As IranPoll’s presidential survey utilized probabilistic sampling, the margin of sampling error could be used to estimate prediction error in the results as followed:

• Hassan Rouhani: 57.14% - 58.00% = -0.86%

• Ebrahim Raisi: 38.28% - 36.40% = 1.88%

Considering poll’s margin of error of +-3.09%, the predicted results for both candidates fall in the margin of error. This shows IranPoll’s estimation were correct and accurate within the margin of sampling error.

While less commonly known the margin of sampling error does not apply to the spread between the candidates, and only to the percentage point estimates themselves. There are a number of metrics available for quantifying error in election poll estimates. However, in this short summary only the two simplest measures are used. These two same measures were utilized by the “American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR)” in analyzing the polling results of the United States’ 2016 presidential election. The result is published by AAPOR in a paper titled “A Primer on Pre-Election Polls” available here.

The first measure is the “absolute error” on the predicted vote margin which is always a positive number. This is computed as the absolute value of the margin (%Rouhani-%Raisi) in the poll minus the same margin (%Rouhani-%Raisi) in the certified vote.

In the case of IranPoll’s public results, the “absolute error” will be as followed:

“absolute error” = (58.0% - 36.4%) – (57.14% - 38.28%) = 2.74%

The second error measure used by AAPOR is the “signed error” on the projected vote margin. “Signed error” is calculated similar to the “absolute error” but does not take the absolute value and can be positive or negative. In the case of IranPoll’s public results, the “absolute error” and “signed error” remain the same.

As IranPoll continues to publicly make its election polls available, over years the results provided above could be utilized to analyze election polling accuracy in Iran further.

This summary is available in PDF form here.