Note: PA Consulting Group was hired by USAID to conduct its own exit polls in Azerbaijan's 6 November election. The following are extracts from the article published in New Republic Online - the full article can be seen by clicking on the link opposite.
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'PA Consulting says it is doing nothing more than building confidence in the electoral process - ie, checking against fraud. Its contract is to cover 65 districts out of the 125 in the country.'
'...PA will be bringing in interviewers from outside of their respective regions. Outside monitors will drive from polling station to polling station picking up the written polls and will call the results in themselves, providing a second layer of checks. The monitors, in turn, will be supervised by international observers, who will sit with them all day in the car as they report their numbers back to a central office.'
'In another safeguard, to ensure that those taking the poll can maintain their anonymity, PA has a list of three or four questions, asking only broad swathes of information (such as "woman between the age of 30 and 50 years old"). The Mitofsky questionnaire instead asks specific questions about the respondents' age, gender, and occupation. That might dissuade those taking the poll from giving honest answers.'
To see the full article as published in New Republic Online please click on the link at top right of this page
