I hadn’t seen this poll before, but it seems a YouGov Siraj internet poll has journalists from a range of otherwise respectable media outlets misinterpret data once again.
More than 1,000 people from 18 countries in the Middle East responded to YouGov Siraj‘s internet poll question: “In your opinion, should Syria’s President Assad resign?”
- 81% of answered Yes
- 55% of respondents in Syria said they thought the president should stay
BUT
- Only 98 respondents were actually from Syria
- Only 18% of people in Syria have access to the internet
In other words, 55 people in a vastly biased internet poll answered that they don’t think that the despot whose intelligence quite probably monitors every move of the citizens’ internet usage should resign. That’s simply not close to being news.