Not IVAD’s proudest moment, but proof positive that they lean toward the government – a few weeks after this headline, the opposition defeated the government by two percentage points.
Happy Monday, everyone. A new poll in my Inbox today, this one from IVAD which, as you probably know, usually leans toward the government in its numbers. The highlights:
- 77% of those polled think the government is headed in the wrong direction;
- 82.5% say the country is mired in an economic crisis;
- 78.9% think the country is living a political crisis;
- 63.4% view Nicolás Maduro’s performance in a negative light; 48.4% think it’s either “bad” (22.1%) or “awful” (26.3%);
- 68.6% have little to no confidence that Maduro can solve the country’s economic problems;
- 66.8% agrees with calling a Constitutional Assembly;
- 58.4% thinks Maduro should resign;
- 59.1% think the government is not democratic and is becoming a dictatorship;
- 57% blames government forces for the deaths that happened during the protests;
- 79.5% thinks there are political prisoners in Venezuela;
- 50.9% is willing to vote for opposition candidates for a Constitutional Assembly, while 27.6% would be willing to vote for the PSUV candidates;
- 49.8% of those polled are either opposition or lean opposition, while 32.5% are either pro-government or lean pro-government.
The whole poll is here.
A few things pop out. First, the focus of the poll seems to be Leopoldo and his proposal for a Constitutional Assembly, which is fine. But what is surprising is the strength of the proposal for a Constitutional Assembly: a sizeable chunk of those polled, 41.4%,say they are willing to sign their names to call a Constitutional Assembly.
I think the #2019 faction has to answer a basic question: faced with this scenario, what exactly is the case for stating that we should wait, that now is not the time to act?
(Note: I don’t think IVAD releases its polls, so this is probably a leak; however, it comes from @puzkas).
Caracas Chronicles 
“50.9% is willing to vote for opposition candidates for a Constitutional Assembly, while 27.6% would be willing to vote for the PSUV candidates;”
I find that really hard to believe. Then again, 49.8% defined themselves as “pro-oppo”, so there’s that.
Also, María Corina’s Disapproval is at 50.5% while her approval is only at 36%. Vente Venezuela crying in 3, 2, 1…
Capriles has a +5.5% net approval rating. Good for him.
What’s most surprising, though, are Henri Falcon’s numbers, as he commandas the highest net approval rating of anyone (+11.6% net approval).
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“Also, María Corina’s Disapproval is at 50.5% while her approval is only at 36%. Vente Venezuela crying in 3, 2, 1…
Capriles has a +5.5% net approval rating. Good for him.”
Knowing how biased and mistaken are the regime’s polls, stating that the most uncomfortable candidates are hated by everybody doesn’t surprise me, I guess they might even said that Leopoldo has like a 95% of dissaproval or something like that.
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The Constituent Assembly folks are not necessarily the most liked politicians in the country, at least according to the poll. So it strikes me that people may be in favour of the general idea of the CA but not those who are behind it. Clearly, Falcón and Capriles are not the ‘let’s call for national referendum now type’, and yet, they seem to be the only ones with reasonable possibilities of becoming alternative leaders.
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You say it yourself. IVAD has not been trustworthy in the past, and there should not be any reason to trust in them now.
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I disagree. IVAD’s samples are usually biased in favor of the government. Keeping that in mind, their numbers are surprising.
If they were completely untrustworthy, I wouldn’t have posted their results.
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Juan,
It could be that they are just biased in favor who hires them. So given the questions they have been asked this is not a government hired poll. It’s easy to believe that they just bias the poll because they think that’s what the customers want to hear. Is this a vp hired poll?
Platy
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Doh, hadn’t read the poll. Of course it was hired by VP. Does IVAD just have a random number generator?
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So now we simply discard polls just because of whom we suspect hired them?
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It can be because they have been placed so that we think we are doing well?
After all: they don’t care for more than a year, there are no elections now.
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“After all: they don’t care for more than a year, there are no elections now.”
Wrong, the existence of elections in 2015 is the very thing that’s stopped them from raising gasoline prices and devaluating towards the “exchange unification”
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No but you have to agree tht IVAD has been consistently untrustworthy. You call it a government bias, I call it whoever hired them bias. See Cal’s note below pointing to datanalisis poll just a month ago having 3% approval. Arguably different poll question as it was constituyente in a range of options. But hard to believe that it really has 66% approval. I can’t come up with a single question in that poll that is not what VP wanted to hear.
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I don’t understand the difference between the IVAD result and the Datanálisis one. Regardless, IVAD has been consistently used by the opposition, including PJ. See here
http://www.primerojusticia.org.ve/cms/index.php?option=com_flexicontent&view=item&cid=158:en-la-prensa&id=13323:reciente-estudio-de-ivad-da-ganador-a-candidato-de-la-mud-en-municipio-brion&Itemid=500
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Juan, on a previous post you posted recently it said that among all the opposition’s propositions to deal with this governemnt the “asamblea constituyente” was the least favorited one. Which is completelyddifferent from what this new poll says. What are your thoughts on this?
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Here we go again. Everytime the country is in a very harsh economic situation, someone comes in and proposes a Constitutional Assembly, to change the Constitution so that it can change the people that are in place ..et règler tous les problèmes par après…..fifteen years after, there is another harsh situation and a new carismatic messias comes in and proposes a Constitutional Assembly to solve all the problems. This has been going on for more or less 200 years…and this is the country we end up having.
Sorry guys, but the mess we are in is because:
1) People were delighted with a coup d’état to save them in 1992
2) People were delighted to interrupt CAP constitutional mandate
3) The Supreme Court accepted a Constitutional Assembly in 1998
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
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A large group of people who do not approve of the regime evidently see no political alternative of their liking. Which makes me think, what is missing from these polls is numbers for people who want a military coup.
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let me add to this that people asking for a Constitutional Assembly not only come from the opposition’s side of “la talanquera”, there is a nice chunk of the population who have been brainwashed into thinking that they want the comunal state included in the constitution, even though no one knows what a comunal state is.
I get it that a constitutional assembly seems like a nice chance to press the reset button and place better authorities on every branch of goverment without having to force the current ones out by force, but I think that given how gerrymandered the circuits are, the goverment could easily hijack the idea to fully destroy wathever remain of institucionality in the country.
Unfortunately, I think the only “easy” way to make change happen would be to wait to activate the recall referendum or until the 2019 elections and take our chances in the hope that the existing authorities would leave the office. The only other alternative would be that people who have the guns and the power get the sudden realization that they’re failing miserably at their jobs and force themselves out of power or into change.
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There’s something terribly wrong in Venezuelan polls. Just a few days ago, Puzkas himself reported that, according to Datanalisis, only 3.3 per cent of those polled supported a Constituent Assembly. 3 to 66 in two weeks? This is simply not believable; thus, someone is making serious methodological mistakes or… is manipulating numbers. I don’t know which one.
http://puzkas.com/evaluacion-del-gobierno-es-la-peor-en-una-decada/
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Correction: not two weeks, but a month. But that doesn’t make much of a difference.
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The problem here is that the more the dictatorship consolidates itself in power, the more useless these figures above get. When opinions can’t touch the government nor become votes, they are not that relevant in the big scheme of things. Stalin was not very concerned about approval ratings, was he?
Time is ticking for Venezuela.
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two comments : one , lets remember that there is a struggle going on inside the regime to see whose views are going to dominate the agenda for trying to deal with the crisis . The struggle has to involve two basic views , those of Ramirez and those of Arreaza , Ive seen much more of Arreaza lately so Im guessing he is clambering on top and may have the cards to go for a beheading of his rival (one where you wont see any blood being spilled but where Ramirez will be eased out of his slot as top economic pdvsa honcho and given praises and honorary rewards to disguise Arreazas thriumph ) . The call for all minister to submit their resignations ahead of time may mean that this beheading is already underway and will be announced any time now.
Second : The numbers are ugly and there must be a movement inside the leadership to appear to be making big internal changes to signal that something effective is being done to deal with the crisis . This involves a struggle , some of the factions inside the whale may be using trusted Pollsters to tell a story to frighten the rival factions about the dangers of taking or not taking certain measures they propose. Hurry up and unify the exchange rate or raise gasoline prices or things will get lots worse etc etc.
These polls may not be intended to affect the general population but to influence the party stalawarts about the need to support one or another of the rival factions inside the leadership .!!
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The right time to act is after they implement the neoliberal measures we will have to implement anyway if we were to win now. That simple.
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They might never implement anything. They could just try to keep it going, running on fumes, until they can’t any longer. Every minute these people stay in power our economy and our country as a whole sinks deeper, and it’ll be all that harder to get it out.
We´ve been trying to read the tea leaves, but it seems that we are not any good at it, because in the end Maduro doesn’t do squat. Price of gas? FX policy? consumer prices? monetary policy? fiscal balance? Nothing. It’s not that they don’t have ideas, it’s just that anything they do will make the situation temporarily worse, even if it’s the right medication in the long run.
So don’t hold your breath. And if you get the chance get them out of the Gvt asap!
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Then so be it. Let them run this country into the ground. The worse has yet to come, do you wish for us to be rulling when the chicken comes home to roost? Just today I heard someone defending the biometric system: it only means that our punishment hasn’t been severe enough.
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“I think the #2019 faction has to answer a basic question: faced with this scenario, what exactly is the case for stating that we should wait, that now is not the time to act?”
” I promise this is the last “oppo vs. oppo” article for a while.”
That was a short while.
In a previous article you referred as #2019 as those that blamed #LaSalida for the current opposition woes. But now you equate them to some people that sustain that we should wait and not act (presumably until 2019).
That seems like a false dichotomy, not everyone that criticized #LaSalida thinks we should wait and do nothing.
Is there such a thing as the #2019 faction or is it a straw man?
Who exactly has proposed to wait and not act?
I think a much better question would be:
Putting aside any misgivings about IVAD and the poll accuracy and assuming, for a moment, that the poll really reflects the current opinion of the people … then what?
what should the opposition do in such a politically favorable scenario?
How to move forward and take advantage of the increased rejection of the government?
Should the opposition call immediately for a Constitutional Assembly?
Should they call for a revocatory referendum instead?
Should they just strategize and focus on the #2015 legislative elections?
Should they first demand a new and fair CNE?
Should they step up the Citizens assemblies?
Should they start protesting against the scarcity, the fingerprint machines, crime, etc?
Should they protest about the political prisoners?
Should they resuscitate #LaSalida?
Should they start another round of guarimbas?
All of the above? none of the above?
some of the above? if so, in what order?
Just some open questions. I have my opinion but I welcome your opinions.
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The question that needs to be polled is the following: how willing are you to sign a petition to call for a constitutional referendum, adding your signature, your fingerprint and you picture.
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