In October, I traveled to Kabul on behalf of Charney Research in New York to oversee the pre-tests and interviewer training for a nationwide survey conducted on behalf of ABC news, BBC News and ARD of Germany. The results, which were released today, are interesting for a number of reasons– particularly the wealth of tracking […]
Sorry for the silence lately, but I was in Afghanistan for work and transited through Baku. Lucky for me, I was there during the “foiled terror attack” that forced the UK and US Embassies to shut down for a day or two. Personally, I’m pretty skeptical of the whole story. Whenever Azerbaijanis, or Russians for […]
Talk about asking tough questions in tough places! Matt Warshaw, Senior Research Manager at D3 Systems, and friend and colleague, responded to interview questions about the challenges associated with conducting research in Afghanistan and Iraq at World Public Opinion. Read it. I think you’ll be surprised about a lot of the answers. My favorite answer? […]
I wrote a piece for Oxford Business Group on the Ukraine Elections that was posted today. A Paler Shade of Orange Ukraine, Volume 82 03.10.2007 Ukrainian voters went to the polls on Sunday for the third time in three years in an effort to end the political stagnation that has plagued the country since the […]
Two weeks ago, I posted a rather glib post about fake public polls in Ukraine, arguing that from a strategic point of view or as evidence of stolen elections, they’re meaningless. However, in the long run, the spate of fake pre-election polls make it that much harder to get information on what Ukrainians really think […]
Back in July, Ken Silverstein wrote an interesting article for Harpers about the how big PR firms in Washington acquire and serve foreign governmental clients. He posed as an agent for a shadowy company that wanted to hire a firm to improve Turkmenistan’s image in DC. Under the ruse, he collected proposals and price sheets […]
There’s a lot of handwringing in Kyiv about all the bad polls the newspapers are publishing in the weeks before the election on September 30th. The sociologists have their panties in a bunch that the science of statistics is being used to mislead voters. Bloggers like Mark MacKinnon worry that it’s evidence that it’s 2004 […]
Last Friday, I received a phone call from Mr. Ilgar Ibrahimoglu, the well-known Imam of Baku’s Cuma Mosque, who wanted to comment on my post on Islam in Azerbaijan. We spoke briefly through an interpreter. He followed up with this email, posted in its entirely (with minor language edits for clarity): Dear Christine Quirk, I […]
I always appreciate it when thoughtful journalists write stories about Azerbaijan, since there’s so little written by anyone who understands that part of the world. RFE/RL’s Liz Fuller knows what she’s talking about. But her recent RFE/RL series on Islam in Azerbaijan raised a lot of questions for me. With its corrupt government, human rights […]
