Pollster gauges Arab opinion
By Madeline McMahon Staff Reporter
Adam Pechter ’93, who owns a political polling company, told students Sunday afternoon about the importance of garnering honest responses in measuring shifting public opinion in the Middle East.
Pechter spoke to about 15 students at a Master’s Tea in Silliman College Sunday afternoon about his company, Pechter Polls, which conducts polls in Middle Eastern countries by training local employees to collect data from their own communities. Pechter said he thinks this method avoids what he called the biases of Western pollsters and can help pinpoint the source of conflicts in the Middle East, such as those during the recent “Arab Spring.”
“It’s necessary to have the [most honest] response possible, where the responders feel the most comfortable,” he said. “We …
September 2011 Poll Shows 40 Percent of Jerusalem Arabs Prefer Israel to a Palestinian State
PolicyWatch #1867
Poll Shows 40 Percent of Jerusalem Arabs Prefer Israel to a Palestinian State
By David Pollock November 2, 2011
The nearly 300,000 Palestinian residents of Jerusalem, regardless of diplomatic rhetoric, are almost evenly divided in choosing between Israeli and Palestinian citizenship.
In the wake of Washington’s decision to cut funding to UNESCO, a new phase of diplomatic debate approaches regarding the application for recognition of a Palestinian state “with East Jerusalem as its capital.” Yet new research reveals that a surprisingly large number of the Palestinians who actually reside in the city reject that prospect. Forty-two percent say they would even try to move to Israel if their neighborhood became part of a new Palestinian state. And a statistically equivalent 39 percent say they …