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

Why do almost two-thirds of Zimbabweans say they trust the president? What do they mean by “trust”?

Sorry, these are (great) questions we can’t answer yet.

We gather quantitative data on about 100 questions, on lots of different topics (democracy, economy, poverty, corruption, climate change, tolerance. …).

We analyze the data and make our findings and the data publicly available.

Some of these “What does it mean?” questions may be illuminated by more in-depth analysis of the current data set and/or by the addition of qualitative research done by others.

But a lot of this work of analysis, reflection, and discussion has to be done by Zimbabweans themselves – activists, policy makers, journalists, citizens.

Brian Howard is Afrobarometer’s publications manager and acting communications coordinator. Email: bhoward[at]afrobarometer.org.

Carolyn Logan is deputy director of Afrobarometer and associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Michigan State University. Email: clogan[at]msu.edu.

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