Austrians Oppose Minaret Ban

[Nachtengel]

A Gallup survey published in the Österreich newspaper shows that 60% of Austrians oppose a minaret ban. Just 31% said they would welcome such a measure. Even among FPÖ (Freedom Party) voters, just 44% supported a ban, 47% are opposed. Among BZÖ (Alliance for the Future of Austria) voters, 70% want a ban on building minarets.

The least approval for such a ban was among Greens voters (4%). 24% of SPÖ (Social Democratic Party) voters support a ban, and 35% of ÖVP (People's Party) voters.

The 400 Austrians questioned were more agreeable to a full-veil (Burka) ban: 53% supported it, 40% opposed it, and 7% had no opinion.

According to the survey fear of Islam among Austrians is limited: 83% of respondents said that they had no unpleasant experiences with Muslims.

http://islamineurope.blogspot.com/20...-italians.html

[Josef]

Funnily enough, those numbers are quite similar to those that "surveys" in Switzerland produced. Turns out that 40% in a survey are 70% in reality.

[Méldmir]

I think most Austrians want a ban. Austrians are a bit more conservative and realistic than many other Germanic nations today.

[Sigurd]

Never believe a statistic/poll you haven't faked yourself. The leftist, boulevard newspaper Österreich (the irony of the name!) is "renowned" for participating in dirty, sensationalist journalism and conducting biased polls, with selective choice of people interviewed.

Let's say you only asked the question over unpleasant experiences with Muslims to people in the countryside. Chances are that people aren't going to say they've had negative experience - because many of them quite frankly haven't made any experiences, positive or negative.

Let's assume you interviewed many Muslims as "part of the Austrians". Chances are that 99.99998% of Muslims are against such measures. Again, if you picked people by their name it's easy to tell that a Mehmet Öztürk or Mustafa Dogan entry in the phonebook is a Turk. If you picked 500 Turks out of 1000, you'd already have a sure 50% against such measure.

Let's say you didn't use the phonebook either, but other registers which also says something about professions, you could distort that poll as well, as different professions will oft have different views on a topic. When it doesn't state how many people of a certain profession agreed or disagreed with something, then this is highly suspicious because that's usually almost always asked.

Even if you don't list by profession, but pick them highly selectively --- you could ask 10,000 builders and 10 academics. If 4 academics vote one way then that's just as much "40% of academics" as 4,000 builders are "40% of builders.

The 44% FPÖ statistic I consider highly dubious especially when considering the 70% BZÖ statistic. If we reflect back to the minaret being built in Telfs, with the massive campaign against it lifting the FPÖ to being to strongest party in that village during the 2008 National Election, then this would appear to be directly connected with them standing up against the Turks taking over Telfs (actually hard to find a restaurant or shop not run by a Turk in Telfs).

And so on and so forth. And add to that people perhaps being scared to disclose to a stranger their views about "touchy subjects". People are more likely to offer a "politically incorrect" opinion when with people they are familiar with. Chances are that if 1,000 Nationalists were called by a random polling institute asking whether they thought the NSDAP did some good work, that at least 800 of them would falter and claim not to for being scared to be paid a visit by the Staatsschutz.

Like Josef said, only 35%-40% of people in Switzerland claimed to support the ban in the opinion polls. This then turned out to be closer to 60%, with only 3/26 cantons overall voting against it --- and every single canton sporting higher support for the ban than what was projected in the "nationwide poll" for the entire country (i.e. including more conservative cantons which had 65% or more supporting the ban).

So you could certainly build on that. If even 4% of Greens voters (!!!) claim to support such a poll, then chances are that this is closer to 7% - so if even every thirteenth liberal-leftie is supportive of such a ban, then chances are that it's actually likely to be successful overall.

Typical dirty journalism, with potentially a few hundred tricks by the leftist media to influence people. To recap with what I started out at the beginning of this post: Never believe a statistic/poll you haven't faked yourself.

[Wulfram]

Usually, the questions are targeted at individuals in the 18-36 range, young "with-it" types, like students.
They can always rely on the gullibility of those whose inexperience fills them with optimistic generosity.
The poll takers were more than likely of college age themselves. After all, the best method is to persuade youth with youth.

They know to mostly avoid the 40 and up crowd, particular the elderly, who will remember how life used to be before the muslim scourge and will give an unfavorable and unsuitably correct opinion. Since most younger Austrians are already indoctrinated, this poll will only make the older ones more reluctant to speak openly against the opinions of the youthful “majority”, whose pro-multi-cult stance will only be further confirmed as a result.

Even if they did ask every single Austrian I would still not trust the results because they would lie regardless.