CAIRO - As the presidential candidates rush to lure the voters, Egyptians have been busy watching these candidates on TV talk shows. In the meantime, polls conducted by the press and social networks have been trying to guess the identity of the next president. But have these polls been methodological enough? "I cannot trust all the sources of these polls," says Theresa Nabil Aziz, 30, a freelance translator. “For example, there was a satellite entertainment channel whose poll didn't target all categories, just one specific category. Personally, I'm relying on the candidates' manifestoes in making my choice.” Some political figures and academics differ on whether polls have an impact on the decisions of the Egyptians, who are about to vote in the first and historic presidential elections since the ousting of Hosni Mubarak early last year. "Some polls lack basic criteria like a target group and an aim, as well as avoiding randomness," says Mohamed Khaled, a professor of polls at Cairo University. However, he thinks that the polls on social networking sites and Twitter are a good idea. "The polls won't have an effect on me. I already know whom I'm going to vote for. The polls show a lot of people supporting the feloul [Mubarak's remnants]," Eman el-Naggar, 31, a housewife, told the Egyptian Mail. She added that she too cannot trust polls made on Facebook pages with names like ‘We Are All Khaled Said', because they turn the minds of the users in a certain direction. As for Bahaa el-Kilani, he says that the polls often have a sentimental impact on him. "But I must also admit that they are biased in favour of their source, whether it is a newspaper, a TV channel or a Facebook page." The culture of polls is something new and still very limited in Egypt, but now the appetites of many social network users, concerned about their future, have been whetted. Many Internet users are young people, who account for 60 per cent of the population. "I looked at one of the websites making polls and I was surprised to find my name among those who said they'd vote for Ahmed Shafiq," says Ahmed Maher, a 30-year-old IT network engineer angrily, adding that this he doesn't want to vote for Shafiq and the site administrator illegally used his private data. "When will we have unbiased polls?" asks Maher, who is eager to talk to the pollsters, but doesn't want them to push him in a certain direction. "The atmosphere is very positive for developing democratic practice, helping voters to accept the results of the ballots, whether their candidate gets elected or not," Prof. Khaled comments. Meanwhile, professor of politics Jehad Ouda says that such polls, despite their lack of methodology, sometimes give a good indication about how the public are thinking. The first official poll in Egypt was supervised by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF). Entitled ‘Constitution or presidential elections first?', it divided Egyptian society, shocked by the results. Ouda believes that the polls organised by governmental agencies are designed to gauge the opinions of young people, who will have a huge influence on the ballot, in order to avoid surprises and shocks. “The polls also help prepare the candidates for the result, so that they will accept the choice of the people and be ready to win or lose gracefully. "Polls need a budget and need to be organised on a scientific basis; I'm not convinced by the current polls," says professor of social politics Amani Massoud. “After 30 years of a regime which ignored public opinion, I don't trust any of the research centres in Egypt.” None of the presidential hopefuls has withdrawn from the race, says the head of the Higher Presidential Elections Commission (HPEC). According to the Egyptian Cabinet's Information and Decision Support Centre's (IDSC) poll, the highest-scoring candidate was Mubarak's former prime minister Ahmed Shafiq, in contrast with most other published opinion polls. In the IDSC poll, Shafiq received 12 per cent of votes, followed by Amr Moussa on 11 per cent and then Abdel-Moneim Abul Fotouh (9 per cent). In the poll, an enormous 38 per cent of sampled voters said they were still undecided. Major national polls, carried out by both public and private entities, using a similar sample size, have shown significantly different results from the IDSC poll. In these polls, former foreign minister and secretary-general of the Arab League Amr Moussa has been steadily in the lead, with Shafiq and Abul Fotouh alternating between second and third. The IDSC sample included 1,390 people; 29 per cent of them upper-middle class, 26 per cent upper class and 33 per cent lower class.
