Polling Predicted Intimidation -- and Not Necessarily Ahmadinejad's Victory

by Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight

Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty, who work for a nonprofit group called Terror Free Tomorrow: The Center for Public Opinion, are out with a comment in today's Washington Post which claims that their poll of 1,001 Iranians conducted last month predicted Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's victory.

Ballen and Doherty are doing admirable and important work. Regular readers will know how difficult it is to conduct a good poll in the United States. Take that difficulty to the fifth power, and you'll have some sense for how difficult it is to conduct a good poll in Iran.

Unfortunately, while the poll itself may be valid, Ballen and Doherty's characterization of it is misleading. Rather than giving one more confidence in the official results, the poll raises more questions than it resolves.

Ballen and Doherty wrote in the Post that their poll showed "Ahmadinejad leading by a more than 2 to 1 margin -- greater than his actual apparent margin of victory in Friday's election." But let's look at what their poll (.pdf) actually said:

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