It's here again. Every year the Chilean polling firm Latinobarometro releases the latest round of public opinion polling data from 18 Latin American countries, and every year Venezuela comes out on top in all the democracy and quality of life categories, and every year the press has no idea what to do with that, so they cover some marginally relevant data point en masse, and ignore the rest. It's become a Thanksgiving tradition, like triptophan! Here's the PDF of the results if you read Spanish. If not, allow me.
Venezuelans:
- Are more likely to support democracy than any other nationality surveyed.
- Are the most likely to say the best way to change things is through voting.
- Are most likely to say that democracy has decreased social inequality in their country.
- Are least likely to say youth are politically apathetic
- Are less worried about high prices than anybody else.
- Are most likely to have access to the internet .
- Are the third mostly likely to say that their countrymen are treated equally under the law, and
- Are the fourth most likely to say their democracy functions better than the rest of Latin America
Anyway, whatever. These are the same results that they get every year. The sport of it is in guessing which weird angle the media will focus on this year. Last year it was that support for Chavez was on the decrease...outside of Venezuela. The year before that it was that Venezuelans disliked Bush (therefore maybe America hmm??) more than everybody else. The press stories are just starting to come in, so there's still plenty of time for wild speculation in the comments section.
Update: Holy crap!
