Baku. Shamil Alibeyli – APA. APA's interview with George Birnbaum, Executive Director of the U.S. “Arthur J. Finkelstein and Associates” company, that will conduct an exit poll in Azerbaijan's presidential elections on October 9 at the invitation of APA Holding LLC
- Be so kind to give some information about your company
-“Arthur J. Finklstein and Associates” has been a political consulting and survey research company existing for forty years. We have done an extensive work throughout the world, starting in US and we have done work in Africa, the Middle East. Our foundation is survey research. In fact part of this research is election analysis and exit-polling. Our CEO Arthr Finkstein in fact in 1960-s was hired by NBC to actually develop the first methodologies using in exit-polling. That standards are still using today. We are proud to say that Arthur was elected to the political consulting “hall of fame”, which is quite a nice vote of confidence for us. We are here in Azerbaijan to help in conjunction with APA and using local researches from TED to provide real time analysis on exit-poll on the upcoming national elections for president. We are very excited about it, it’s been a wonderful process until now, we in fact did a pre-election survey which I am happy to discuss today. It has been a wonderful process so far, we are proud to be in Azerbaijan. We actually research the various research forms that are operated in Azerbaijan. We saw that TED has an extensive knowledge, extensive history and we would consider our standards about operating procedures when it comes to methodology, quality of data. So we came to Azerbaijan, and decided that we can make a perfect local partner with TED and that’s why we are very happy with the results, the pre-election survey that we did, the data which is the basis for the analysis was excellent, meaning the data collection process, techniques, the methodology was fantastic and met all of the standards.
-Have you ever worked in other parts of the world and is it your first visit to the region?
-We have worked in places such as Albania, Hungary, Romania, Czech Republic, Serbia, Israel, some African countries, some countries we are not allowed to talk about for various reasons. This is our first time in Azerbaijan. We’ve done work in Georgia.
-Some words about methodology
-In terms of methodology, the most important part is to really get a random sample, meaning that we don’t pick a predefined universe, we try to apply a random sample methodology and trying to get a diverse population as possible. If the population is 52 percent is female, we wan to try to make interview with approximately 55 percent of women in our survey. Also, originally we want to make sure that the particular region contributes 20 percent of the population, that region in a survey also contributes 20% in of a respondent in a survey, so we try to make sure. We try to define the demographics in order that the results match what an election would look like in a given day in a country. So we spent a lot of time working with TED to define the demographic and the regional percentages. Interviewers make face to face interviews in various regions, it has to be a mix of both urban and rural, large and small cities, villages, farms. Our survey covered all the regions in Azerbaijan.
-What will be your activity during election day?
-We are going to have 16 hundred individuals, spread throughout the country. The people come out the polling and interviewers asking them serious questions in short questionnaire. Those results then would be sent to our data center where data center will enter these data into computer. Those results would be sent to our office in New York. We will in real time analyze the data and be able to present it back here in Azerbaijan within the few hours after polls’ closing. There will be random sample polling stations, it will be difficult to do all of them. That is doing to reduce margin of error. Statistically if we talk about margin of error, in other surveys margin of error makes plus and minus 4-5%. Based on the sample size that we are doing it is going to be sixty thousand of interviews on the election day our margin of error will be at least 0.7%. At the election day we are going to have 838 exit poll stations.
-Do you make trainings for interviewers?
-The trainings are very important and we spent extensive time here in Azerbaijan. We had a full time representative here in order to training interviewers. In fact, one of the reason to make a pre-elections survey was also a part of a training process. Our methodology is a little bit different, we want to be sure how do they respond to people, to make sure how do they complete the interview, quality of the interview and so on. We’ve been extremely impressed with the level of people that are doing interviews. Often when we go to the countries we are going to work, the local researches were the higher students, sometimes high schools, sometimes university without any training, without any knowledge how do it. People here we met were actual interviewers. They are very educated, very diligent, they want to learn, they making notes and in fact we were very pleased that the pre-election survey gave us confidence that the during election day the accuracy of the results would be excellent. We didn’t set the criteria, TED set the criteria, they recruited the people. Based on their history, expertise they know the type of the people. It is of the reasons we decided to work with TED. So they’ve chosen wisely the people that are going to make interviews.
-Do you think Azerbaijan differs from other countries in terms of conducting exit-poll?
Sometimes you find slight cultural differences. Some countries may tolerate 10 questions, some may tolerate 4 questions. But in general, people are proud of having voted. In fact in America when you vote you get a sticker that says "I voted" and everywhere they go they wear stickers "I voted". In Iraq, in Afghanistan people showed they voted holding up their ink-stained fingers. It is a fact that people are proud to vote they are usually pretty eager with someone coming up afterwards and ask "Who did you vote for". I don't see any difference from that point of view.
-There are some reports that your company is not so mature in conducting exit-poll...
Arthur J. Finkelstein in 1960s developed the methodology that is still used today for American network television on exit-polls. I think we are pretty mature. Arthur is the grandfather of modern-day exit-polling. I don't know where these reports came from. Since the start of the exit-polls Arthur has been at the head of developing of the methodology. I think those who have written these reports did not do the homework.
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