Public opinion polling in Syria, a country where the president regularly takes upwards of 90 percent of the vote, has never been easy. And, after five years of war, it’s the loudest voices we often pay attention to. A survey of 2,000 Syrian refugees in Lebanon, summarised in Foreign Affairs by Columbia University's Daniel Corstange, offers a rare scientific alternative, certainly as a sample of the approximately 1.5 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon.
A few key takeaways: just over half the refugees support the opposition, but a substantial portion (40 percent) backs the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Opposition supporters who back Islamist factions are barely more religious than those who prefer nationalist rebels. As has been long thought, opposition supporters are found to be poorer and more poorly educated than those who side with the regime, but there is not an overwhelming demand for a religious state. Finally, those who back nationalist opposition groups are 50 percent more politically engaged than their peers who back Assad. There's a lot of useful information packed into this short piece, so best to check out the numbers for yourself.
