In Myanmar (Burma), the tentative steps towards democracy since 2010 have brought with them some of the tools that dominate most Western democracies, including public opinion polls. Polling is a great device for ascertaining what the public sees and what it needs, but the first public polls in Myanmar were met with skepticism by some of those who might benefit most from understanding them.
The findings of two 2014 polls conducted by international NGOs in Myanmar were publicly released last year, sparking an important debate on the value of public opinion in the country. Those public polls appeared to meet internationally accepted polling standards, and all evidence indicated that the Burmese people were able to answer the questions freely.
In December, I led a team of polling experts from the region—Mahar Mangahas of the Philippines’ Social Weather Station and Ibrahim Suffian of Malaysia’s Merdeka Center—to further explore polling capability in Myanmar. The project was sponsored by the Open Society Foundations Burma Project and the Think Tank Foundation, and the complete report is available online in English and Burmese.
