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Kasz216 said:
It'd be hard to covince 95%-97% of voters to vote against nuking their home town... a good 7% will read the question wrong.
Though there's always... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/12/crimea-vote-join-russia-ballot-no-option_n_4947557.html http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/03/30/222894/reports-of-multiple-voting-falsified.html etc
You expected a Balkinization due to ethnic groups like the Tatars whole cocked wanting to stay inedpendent. Crimea says 40% of them did.... They're around 15% of the population. Yet 95-97% of the vote was still to join Russia?
Even with 100% turnout that doesn't jive numbers wise. I know even you don't believe the numbers and are just making a hard time of it for fun, but still. It's easy to point out. |
I've seen the picture you've posted, but it'd been nice of you to post a link to actual report. But nevermind, I've found it, I've read it already some time ago.
a) For starters, I could disregard it simply due to the fact it being IRI. For those who unaware, IRI is state-funded organization, chaired by Mr. John McCain, the very same McCain, whose apperance in any country with ongoing political instability always end up with bloodshed be it Lybia, Syria or Ukraine. To give you an analogy, it's like if RT will quote VTSIOM by saying "hey, but our survey shows that your elections (or whatever) are cooked" -- given the attitude towards RT certain people express ("it's Kremlin-funded, take it with the grain of salt"), it's a great chance for me to do the same but in regards to IRI.
b) Referendum by its nature is substantially more credible than any kind of survey, so if anything referendum disproves survey, not another way around, because 1) referendum by its nature doesn't rely on respondent groups, no extrapolation, no anything; 2) referendum is better documented including photo and video materials; 3) referendum has its own mechanism to claim its legitimacy, international obververs are the part of it, a bunch of them have been invited to this one particulary.
So the viable way to disprove referendum is for certain observer or a group of them to present (not just make some statement in mass media, but to publish signed report): "here and there we have certain violations that makes us wonder if that was free expression of the will of Crimenian people, we demand a honest investigation bla-blah-blah" -- THAT's how you do it, not just throw words "obviously obvious".
c) But let's give the report a benefit of a doubt and assume that IRI researches are honest and professional people. You never considered that survey and actual political vote doesn't necessarily match for gazillion of reasons? Time pass, cirumstances change (oh boy, in Ukraine they did change in a blink of an eye), quiestions and options slightly differ etc?
Let's take a somewhat similar situation of PMR (or TMR, or simply Transdniestria), yet another enclave that sooner or later will be a part of Russia. Unfortunately IRI doesn't have a survey of PMR specifically (only Moldavia), but thanks to guys from CU-Boulder we could take a look at their survery from June 2010. The part that interests us is "TMR - Part of Russia - overall", it is below 50%:
And here's an actual referendum in PMR from 2006:
Yes to Russia more than 98%, no to Russia less than 2% with total votes nearly 80% from all people who have right to vote.
So does that survery proves that given referendum with strikingly similar results is cooked as well?
