Ahmadinejad is the Most Favorable Political Figure in Iran

Stasis Consulting: A recent study found that Former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the most favorable political figure in Iran. Sixty-five percent of Iranians “very much” or “to an extent” like Ahmadinejad. This information is based on a poll conducted by Stasis Consulting between July 19-21, 2022, and July 26-29, 2022.

Former President Ahmadinejad is the most favorable political figure inside the country

Former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the most favorable political figure in Iran among a list of politicians including heads of two main branches of the government (the current President and the Speaker of the Majlis), former presidents, and a former foreign minister. Sixty-five percent of Iranians “very much” or “to an extent” like Ahmadinejad. President Ahmadinejad’s favorability has remained stable around this rate since October 2020.

Question: Please rate how favorably or unfavorably you regard each of the names I read.

Mr. Ahmadinejad is the only political figure whose favorability rating reaches above fifty percent among the list of political figures studied in this survey. Former President Khatami and former Foreign Minister Javad Zarif follow Mr. Ahmadinejad with forty-nine and forty-six percent favorability, respectively. The least favorable politician is former President Rouhani with just 24 percent favorability.

Unfavourability of Political Figures

Former President Rouhani is the most disliked political figure inside the country. Seventy percent of respondents claimed to “somewhat” or “very much dislike” him. Speaker Qalibaf and President Raisi ranked second and third among the most disliked political figures inside the country with sixty-two and sixty-one percent, respectively. Mr. Ahmadinejad is the least unfavorable political figure. Only six percent dislike him to an extent and twenty-three percent very much dislike former President Ahmadinejad.

Favorability of Political Figures over Time

President Ahmadinejad’s favorability has not changed much since the last time Stasis conducted a poll to measure the favorability of political figures inside Iran. In October 2020, President Ahmadinejad was the most favorable political figure with a favorability rating of sixty-four percent among respondents. This is also the case for former President Khatami, former Foreign Minister Zarif, and former President Rouhani, each seeing only slight changes in their standing in popular opinion. However, the favorability of the President Raisi and of Speaker Qalibaf have dropped dramatically compared to October 2020 at rates of seventeen percent and fourteen percent, respectively.

Remarks

The results of this poll have been interactively visualized in this link.

This is an interactive platform detailing the results of every question, distinguished in a bar chart by gender, age group, location, and education.

For each question, there is also a bubble chart (consisting of many small circles), detailing the respondents’ information. Each circle represents a single respondent; clicking on any given circle will generate the complete answer set for that particular respondent. The color coding is consistent between the bubble chart and bar chart for easy comparison.

Methodology

Telephone interviews were conducted between July 19-21, 2022, and July 26-29, 2022, among 1246 respondents aged 18 and older living in Iran. Native Farsi speakers conducted the interviews during daytime hours.
The proportional two-stage sample includes respondents from every province. Provinces have been sampled based on their population.
Results are weighted by gender, age, and location (urban vs. rural areas) based on the Iranian national census of 2016 and 2018 statistical yearbook.
Based on the sample, there is a 95 percent confidence that the margin of sampling error is within ± 2.7 percentage points.
Rates of respondent candor and reliability were appraised by experienced interviewers. Forty-two persons found to be lacking in these areas were removed from the sample.