The Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan has conducted a public opinion poll on the government of Dr. Marouf Al Bakhet one and a half year after its formation, during the period between 30/5-3/6/2007. The completed national sample of the opinion poll amounted to 983 respondents. The sample of opinion leaders was 601 respondents who completed the poll, distributed among seven categories, as illustrated in Table (1). This poll aims at identifying citizens’ evaluation of the performance of Dr. Al Bakhet performance, one and a half year after its formation, in addressing the problems and issues assigned to it. The poll also aims at identifying their views towards the most important problems facing Jordan today, which “the government must begin to address immediately”.
This report includes four major sections. The first deals with the Jordanian public opinion’s expectations and evaluation of the performance of the government as a whole, compared with that of all the successive governments since 1996. This section includes all the results of the previous polls conducted on each government (formation, 100 days after formation, 200 days after formation, one year after formation, one and a half year after formation and two years after formation). To follow the trend of public opinion towards governments, the percentage of respondents in the polls on the formation of the government who believed that the government “will be successful to a large extent” in shouldering the responsibilities of the coming stage, and the percentage of respondents in the all the polls which were conducted following the formation of the government who believed that the government “has been successful to a great extent in shouldering its responsibilities since its formation until now, were calculated.
The second section presents a general comparison between respondents’ expectations and evaluation of the performance of the Prime Minister, the government as a whole (the prime minister and the ministerial team) and the ministerial team (with the exception of the Prime Minister). In this section, the arithmetic means of the three questions concerning the Prime Minister, the government and the ministerial team, was defined and converted into a percentage, in the aim of following the trends of the Jordanian public opinion since the center started, in 2002, to measure the government’s performance one and a half year after formation.
The third section presents the respondents’ evaluation, in this poll, of the performance of Dr. Al Bakhet government in addressing the specific issues assigned to it, compared to the respondents’ evaluation of its performance in the polls conducted one year, 200 days and 100 days after formation, in addition to the expectations of its success in achieving these tasks in the poll on the formation of the government.
The fourth section includes the most important problems facing Jordan today, which “the government must begin to address immediately”. It also includes the citizens’ evaluation of their household economic situation in the last three years.