There were no shortage of news commentaries about the supposedly "stolen" presidential elections in Iran. I was a little bit suspicious of how anyone could begin saying the election was rigged with no evidence, within minutes of when the official results were announced. An article today from the Washington Post actually confirms my suspicions. Before the elections, presidential incumbent candidate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was expected to win by a wider margin than he finished with.
Many experts are claiming that the margin of victory of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the result of fraud or manipulation, but our nationwide public opinion survey of Iranians three weeks before the vote showed Ahmadinejad leading by a more than 2 to 1 margin -- greater than his actual apparent margin of victory in Friday's election.
What actually happened is that upper-middle class groups in Iran screamed the loudest and the western media believed the hype without conducting any independent research. The supposed "new media" internet revolution by opposition candidate supporters was nothing more than a story-book example class privilege.
Much commentary has portrayed Iranian youth and the Internet as harbingers of change in this election. But our poll found that only a third of Iranians even have access to the Internet, while 18-to-24-year-olds comprised the strongest voting bloc for Ahmadinejad of all age groups....Yet again, the mainstream media and now even so called "new media" like the Huffington Post, interfere in other nation's democracies, telling lies, or distorting the truth. The Iranian election is a most obvious case.
The only demographic groups in which our survey found Mousavi leading or competitive with Ahmadinejad were university students and graduates, and the highest-income Iranians.
