Tag: Poll

KANO - Riots spread across Nigeria's north on Monday as results from presidential elections showed incumbent Goodluck Jonathan assured of victory in polls that reflected deep regional tensions. Residents reported that a home belonging to an aide to the vice president was among those set alight and a mob sought to burn a Christian woman alive in one area.
Protesters fought running battles with soldiers in Nigeria's main northern city. A 24-hour curfew was imposed on the state of

KATSINA - Nigerian presidential poll results Sunday showed sharp divides between the mainly Muslim north and mostly Christian south after a largely peaceful vote, though sporadic riots broke out over rigging fears.
Millions of voters turned out for Saturday's election as Africa's most populous country bid to put years of rigging and badly flawed ballots behind it and hold the cleanest polls for head of state in nearly two decades. Observers gave the polls an initial thumbs up,

ISLAMABAD - Results of a recent Gilani Poll conducted by Gallup Pakistan show that most Pakistanis are satisfied with their team's performance in the recently concluded Cricket World Cup, with a total of 50% rating the Pakistani team's performance as good or very good.
While 22% feel Shahid Afridi did very well as Captain in the World Cup while another 33% rate his captaincy as good.
In a survey, a nationally representative sample of men and women from across the country

NAIROBI - A local tribunal would not be a credible mechanism to try Kenyan post-election violence suspects because the wealthy political elite would manipulate the court, Kenya's "Iron Lady" Martha Karua said on Monday. Six top suspects are due at the International Criminal Court (ICC) later this week, a move that has intensified infighting in the fractured coalition government as many members, including President Mwai Kibaki, want local trials.
Karua, known as the Iron Lady for

MADRID - Spain's centre-right opposition Popular Party would defeat the Socialists, in power for eight years, if elections were held now, El Pais newspaper said. The latest monthly poll results from Metroscopia, published by El Pais on Sunday, shows the PP widening its lead slightly in an election scenario, garnering 44.1 percent of votes compared with 28.3 percent for the Socialists.
The poll comes one day after Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said he would not seek

BERLIN - German Chancellor Angela Merkel braced for a bitter setback Sunday as voters in a state her party has ruled for half a century headed to the polls in an election clouded by events in Japan.
Merkel's conservatives have ruled Baden-Wuerttemberg in southwestern Germany since 1953, but anger over her nuclear policy as well as decisions on Libya and the euro suggest voters could turf her Christian Democrats (CDU) out of power.
A poll released Friday indicated a potential

WASHINGTON - Four in 10 Americans believe Islam is more likely to encourage violence than other religions, up sharply from March 2002, six months after the September 11 attacks, according to a new Pew poll. The figure is lower than July 2004, when a post-9/11 high of 46 percent of respondents said the Muslim faith is more likely than others to foment attacks, but it marks a significant rise from the 25 percent recorded in March 2002 and 35 percent from just seven months ago.
In

ISLAMABAD - The National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) raised questions on Thursday about the authenticity of the 2008 general elections, claiming in a report that more than 56 percent of the registered votes in Sindh turned out to be "bogus", followed by Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The explosive report that NADRA sent to the Election Commission (EC) revealed that of the 19,755,994 voters (11,055,405 male and 8,700,589 female) in Sindh registered in the 2007 electoral

WASHINGTON - First Lady Michelle Obama on Monday tops a new poll purporting to show how warmly Americans regard their leaders, besting even her husband President Barack Obama. Mrs Obama scored a chart-topping "warmth rating" of 60.1 degrees, three degrees hotter than the president, who came in fourth place in the Quinnipiac University "feeling thermometer" with 56.5 degrees. The survey asked voters to rate leaders from O to 100 degrees on the "feeling thermometer" with the highest

LAHORE - The bold, open and sustained support by PPP leader and former Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) president Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan helped the pro-judiciary Professional Group of Hamid Khan to win the Lahore High Court bar Association (LHCBA) election on Saturday. The situation changed in favour of Hamid's presidential candidate Asghar Ali Gill when Aitzaz, flanked by the Professional Group members, entered into the bar premises and cast his vote.
The supporters chanted

DUBLIN - Irish voters on Friday look certain to oust their government in elections dominated by the collapse of the economy and a hated international bailout.
The widely expected defeat for the eurozone country's traditional party of government, Fianna Fail, would make the Irish government the first to fall victim to the eurozone debt crisis. "They're getting a good kicking, and they deserve it," said Brendan Buckley, a 47-year-old civil servant, at a polling station in north

ASTANA - Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev on Monday unexpectedly rejected a plan to hold a referendum on prolonging his rule until 2020, saying that he would instead call early presidential polls. The announcement stunned Kazakhstan after parliament earlier this month agreed the controversial referendum should go ahead but also came after rare criticism of the ex-Soviet state by its Western ally the US.
The referendum was backed by the ruling Nur-Otan party which sees

ASABA - Nigerians voted on Thursday in a key state governor's ballot seen as a test ahead of April's nationwide elections, with massive security deployed amid fears of further violence.
The governor's election in Delta State, located in the main oil-producing Niger Delta region, came after a court invalidated the result of the 2007 vote after fraud allegations and ordered a re-run just months before a new ballot. Nigeria has been hit by a series of attacks in recent weeks,

ANKARA - The United States and Israel top the list of countries that Turks see as a threat, according to an opinion poll seen by AFP on Wednesday.
The survey, conducted by the Ankara-based Metropoll research company last month, found that 42.6 percent saw the United States as "the greatest external threat," with another 23.7 percent singling out Israel.
Turkey's eastern neighbour Iran ranked third, listed by three percent of the respondants, while another neighbour and

LOS ANGELES -It's first half is still playing in theaters and collecting millions of dollars at box offices, but already fans of British boy wizard Harry Potter can't wait to see his final chapter on film.
"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2" is the most-anticipated movie of 2011 among both men and women, according to a poll by online movie ticket seller Fandango.com. The movie, which lands in theaters in July next year, is the last in the lucrative series based on the

PRISTINA: Kosovo voted Sunday in its first elections since declaring independence in 2008, with many voters angered to find themselves still among Europe's poorest citizens.
Police reported theats to minority Serb voters in the north of the overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian territory when shots were fired into an empty building. The electoral commission put turnout across the territory at over 11 percent shortly before midday, and there were no other reports of violence.
In

ABIDJAN: Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo has dismissed talk of a possible resumption of war, and said rival factions should negotiate a solution to a crisis provoked by a row over who won elections on Nov. 28.
The comments, published in state-run Fraternite Matin newspaper on Friday, are the first signs from Gbagbo that he is ready for talks to end a deadlock after a top legal body named him as president, reversing election commission results that said rival Alassane