Rounding Up the Presidential Elections Polls

But a new weekly poll conducted by the Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies between May 14 and 17 shows other wise. According to the poll, Moussa is in the lead as well as former Prime Minister and long time Civil Aviation Minister, Ahmed Shafik.   The poll indicates that Moussa is Egypt’s favorite candidate so far, but his popularity fell from 40 percent to 31.7 percent. In the mean time, Shafik came in second with 22.6 percent, which is 2.6 percent higher than last week’s poll. Abolfotoh however came in fourth with 14.6 percent after the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate Mohamed Morsy’s 14.8. AbolFotoh seems to be losing popularity in the Ahram’s weekly polls. According to Ahram Online on May 20, “Abolfotoh's popularity fell following Morsy’s eleventh-hour entry into the presidential contest.”   On the other hand, some believe that this might have happened after the debate that has taken place between Moussa and Abolfotoh on May 10, which made the former look less appealing to many. But this is just the popular assumption among people. Socialist candidate Hamdeen Sabahi remained in fifth place with 11.7 percent of the votes. Sabahi’s popularity, however, sprung up out in May for unknown reasons, but particularly after an interview he had on CBC channel. He went from being under the radar to being considered as competition. On several informal internet polls, particularly on social media, Sabahi is in the lead. But online polls are believed not to be an accurate representation of the street’s pulse since it only represents those with internet access.   Another poll conducted by independent newspaper Al-Masry Al Youm’s Baseera Centre showed Shafik is in the lead by 19.3 percent, while Moussa took second place with 14.6 percent. According to the same poll, which shows slightly different results than Al-Ahram’s, Abolfotoh came in third with 12.4 percent, followed by Sabahi with 9.5 percent of the votes.   Despite all these polls, many are gearing up for a surprising result. After a year full of unpleasant surprises, no one can be certain of who the Egyptian street will choose, or if the presidential elections will end up a success or not.