A survey conducted by Gallup Pakistan has revealed PTI Chairman and former Prime Minister Imran Khan as the most popular leader in the country as 61% of Pakistanis gave him a positive rating.
According to the survey report titled Public Pulse Report, 2,000 people from all four provinces of Pakistan took part in the survey. The survey was conducted in the first 20 days of February 2023.
Currently, the survey is going viral on social media as PTI and its supporters consider it a testament to Imran Khan’s popularity. However, a political economy expert Hamza wrote an interesting Twitter thread on some of the loopholes in the Gallup Survey on Imran Khan’s popularity.
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Firstly, the Gallup survey failed to give equal weightage to all political leaders, creating a false impression of PDM’s popularity. To clarify, three leaders were from PML-N, two from PPP, and one from JUI, whereas PTI, which is currently Pakistan’s biggest political party, had only one leader i.e. Imran Khan. Other PTI leaders should also have been included in the survey despite them being more popular than most PDM leaders.
https://twitter.com/hamzakk/status/1632997708129619969?s=48&t=nOUcAdtOaTtRMQv0iRUQYg
The next issue rose on the 4 point scale where “Very Good; Good; Bad; Very Bad” was used to measure the approval of leaders. Imran Khan received a positive rating of 61%, whereas only 36% have a “good opinion” about PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif and Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari.
“This is critical because people just do not vote for who they may consider “good” if there is a “better” option but in the case of a “very good” opinion, it is easy to see voting intentions. The next on the “very good” list is Nawaz with 14%, still 3 times less than Imran Khan. What does this mean? This is best explained by numbers. If we consider a “very good” opinion to be worth 4 points, “good” worth 2, “bad” worth -2 and “very bad” worth -4, we get the following table as per the Gallup survey,” the Twitter thread explained.
https://twitter.com/HamzaKK/status/1632997716027486208?s=20
Furthermore, misleading questions from the public were asked in the Gallup survey. Gallup reported that 53% of people would support a new political party. However, the people who answered were told that “ALL” members will be honest and “ALL” will be experts in the economy. An answer to such a question will be “YES” to support such a party.
Lastly, the Gallup survey did not ask people about voting intentions, or when they think general elections should be held, however, that could be because the election schedule was still undecided when the Gallup survey was conducted.
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