Secret Poll: Cubans Want Vote

Three-quarters would like say in Castro succession
By Jonas Oransky,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 19, 2007 11:26 AM CST
Secret Poll: Cubans Want Vote
Cuba's acting President Raul Castro waves after attending Gen. Sergio del Valle Jimenez's funeral service at the Colon cemetery in Havana, Saturday, Nov. 17, 2007. Del Valle joined Castro's revolution against dictator Fulgencio Batista through an underground movement in the mid 1950s, and entered the...   (Associated Press)

Three-quarters of Cubans surveyed in an unorthodox poll want to vote on Fidel Castro’s successor, 79% say the current government can't fix the country’s problems, and 83% want changes in the economic system, USA Today reports. The 600 respondents weren’t told they were being polled—and the US government-funded, pro-democracy group that conducted the research didn’t build a representative national sample.

Said a Heritage Foundation fellow, “It’s kind of like a nose under the tent of the real Cuba.” But other pollsters questioned the poll methods, which the group defended. Gallup had previously found 39% of Cubans disapproved of the government; an executive said the newer study “obviously” included the pollsters’ “interjected” opinions. (More Fidel Castro stories.)

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