Hi Girish:
You (or perhaps your editors) wrote
“Hyperinflation and shortages of basic goods have Venezuelans angry—and looking for new leadership”
Venezuela doesn’t have anything close to hyperinflation – a rate of at least 30% per MONTH.
Last year the Guardian conceded this point and corrected an article, so should TIME.
You said NOTHING about the 2002 coup which was endorsed by the Bush admin and in which Lopez and Capriles both participated. Machado clearly backed it as well. That’s an inexcusable omission in an article that mentions coup allegations.
You also cited Datanalisis without mentioning that they are opposition-aligned. Countless op-eds by its president, Luis Vicente Leon, in El Universal, bear that out – though he is certainly not of the Machado / Ledezma / Lopez faction.
There is much that can be said about the less than sterling record of Venezuela’s highly partisan pollsters – including Datanalisis – since 2002.
You may recall the coup and oil strike of the 2002/2203 period came with polls claiming Chavez’s support was only around 30%. That ended with opposition’s humiliating defeat in 2004. A somewhat similar story repeated itself in October, 2012 as international media failed to take the track record and bias of pollsters into account and wildly overestimated Capriles’ chances.
I understand you not going over that history in a brief article but, at the very least, you could have mentioned Datanalisis’ bias.
Joe Emersberger
**
After I sent this note to Gupta, I noticed a newly released poll (reported on a few pro-government websites) by an outfit I never heard of (ICS) reporting that the electorate remains quite solidly Chavista (i.e. in favor of Maduro). However, both these websites do also host aggressive criticism of the government. The problem remains that elections are the best check on pollsters, especially in Venezuela where they have produced such widely varying results, even when elections are imminent. Venezuelan’s next major elections – which are legislative elections – will not take place until December of 2015.
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