FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION
A media survey by CPNN
On February 20, we tried to find out what the people of Venezuela want by putting the following into Google: “Venezuela poll.”
Here are the results we found for polls taken in 2019.
Video of Hinterlaces poll results (in Spanish)
CBS News reports on February 2 that “a new poll . . . showed 82 percent of Venezuelans want Maduro to quit,” but they give no source for this.
We tried various google strategies to find a source corresponding to the claims of CBS, but we could find nothing.
On the other hand, we found the following well-documented source which show very different results.
From the website of Globovision (translated from the Spanish by CPNN): “A study conducted by the polling firm Hinterlaces between January 21 and February 2, 2019, revealed that 57% of respondents consider that the government of the president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, is legitimate. The study was carried out on the basis of 1,580 direct interviews in homes in the country, reported journalist José Vicente Rangel on Sunday, in the Confidential section of the José Vicente Hoy program. In the survey, it was asked: Who do you consider to be the legitimate President of Venezuela? Nicolás Maduro (57%); Juan Guaidó (32%) and in the item, Do not know does not respond (11%).”
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Free flow of information, How is it important for a culture of peace?
What is really happening in Venezuela?
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As for the polling firm Hinterlaces, it is said by the Grayzone Project that “Hinterlaces is led by the independent pollster Oscar Schemel, who has experience studying numerous elections in Venezuela and has a pro-business perspective. Most polling firms in the country, such as the competitor Datanálisis, tend to be pro-opposition. Hinterlaces is more neutral, and often leans toward the government, although Schemel has criticized some of Maduro’s economic policies.”>
According to the Grayzone Project, an earlier poll conducted by Hinterlaces in January found that “86 percent of Venezuelans would disagree with international military intervention. And 81 percent oppose the US sanctions that have gravely hurt the South American nation’s economy.”
Polls taken in 2018 showed that the people of Venezuela have very little confidence in either the government or the opposition. A Pew Research Center survey conducted from Sept. 12 to Dec. 7, 2018 found that “only a third of Venezuelans trust their national government. Among the roughly two-thirds who distrust it, nearly four-in-ten (39%) say they don’t trust it at all.”> At the same time, another poll found that the opposition National Assembly headed by self-proclaimed President Guaido had a disapproval rate of 70%.
[Editor’s note: The Venezuela results are not much different from those of a similar poll in the United States, according to the most recent data from the Gallup Poll . In response to the question “how much trust and confidence do you have in our federal government in Washington when it comes to handling Domestic problems”, the results are Great deal: 6, Fair amount: 29, Not very much: 43, None at all: 20.