Afrobarometer forced to explain itself after survey shows Mugabe has popular support and ZANU-PF would win elections if held tomorrow

Where does Afrobarometer get its data?

Afrobarometer is perhaps best known for its rigorous methodological standards.

We do face-to-face interviews with randomly selected respondents who represent the entire country.

Every adult Zimbabwean had an equal chance of being selected for an interview.

For those who question whether 1 200 respondents can represent the opinions of an entire country, or who suggest that we only interview supporters of a certain party, we encourage you to read about our methodology.

Sample sizes of 1 200 or even less are common in public opinion research all over the world.

And social scientists, statisticians, and evaluators of our work have described Afrobarometer’s methods as “the gold standard” for survey research in Africa.

Starting from the national census, we randomly select a list of census enumeration areas (EAs).

Within each EA, we randomly select sampling start points, and from there, we randomly select households.

Within each household, we randomly select an individual respondent (alternating between men and women to ensure gender balance).

Every region is represented in proportion to its share of the national population, as are urban vs. rural areas.

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