For more details, please see the following:
English Report English Results
Arabic report Arabic Results
Publication date: 16 March, 2011
Field work: 5-7 March 2011
Sample size: 3000 Palestinians in West Bank and Gaza
Margin of Error: ±2%
Highlights:
- Palestinians are closely observing the events unfolding in the Arab world. Approximately, 64 percent view the departure of Hosni Mubarak, the recently deposed President of Egypt, as positive.
- Approximately one-third say the Palestinian political situation is amenable to similar change (as occurred in
Egypt andTunisia ), and 25 percent say that it is to some extent. - One third of respondents believe Palestinian society is generally heading in the right direction, while a majority of 61 percent feels that it is heading in the wrong direction.
- Approximately 45 percent of the respondents believe that the Palestinian political system is less or much less democratic now than it was fifteen years ago.
- The majority of Gazans say that personal freedoms are not protected (Seventy-one percent say the freedom to protest is not protected).
- Sixty-three percent of respondents view the system in the West Bank as democratic or to an extent democratic, compared to 37 percent who say the same about the system in
Gaza (a 26 percent gap). - Fifty-six percent of respondents view the system in the West Bank as pluralistic or to an extent pluralistic, compared to 31 percent who say the same about the system in
Gaza (a 25 percent gap). - The majority of Palestinians (82 percent) support the conduct of municipal election as planned in July 2011, with the highest support in
Gaza (86 percent) compared to the West Bank (79 percent) - Most Palestinians (42 percent) would like to change their present mayors, while 30 percent believe that they should be re-elected.
- In a presidential contest, a plurality of respondents (42 percent) plan to vote for a Fatah candidate with Mahmoud Abbas gaining the highest percentage (25 percent) followed by Marwan Barghouthi (14 percent).
- One-third of respondents believe that negotiations are the best means for ending the occupation and establishing an independent Palestinian state.
- Al Jazeera continues to be the preferred source of television news for (48 percent) of the respondents, followed by Al Arabiyah (23 percent), and Palestine TV (11 percent).