Poll: 58 percent of Ukrainians against NATO membership

The trend is trend in Ukraine is NATO, but whatever the polls say now is quite irrelevant because the issue right now is not NATO membership.

The issue is entry into the NATO Membership Action Plan [MAP] which does not require any referendum.

The NATO MAP exercise is merely a preparatory prequalification process before membership can take place.

The MAP process usually takes several years to complete so by then opinions in Ukraine can change significantly.

Disinformers continually harp on membership in NATO, whereas the issue at hand is merely prequalification in NATO MAP.

58 percent of who? Were the pollesters being fair and excluded all those that carry a Russian Passport? Were there as many Western Ukrainians polled as there were in th East? What are the ages of those polled, Were any of those polled under any sort of family pressures from Russia, in other words is mom and Dad living in Russia? What other motives would there be for anyone voting not to look at NATO from all aspects.

As you can tell, I am very skepical of polls, and realize that all polls can be biased unless the it is done very carefully and all factors considered. Even the final poll (vote in Ukraine) was biased prior to the Orange Revolution. When one looks at the revote and the percentages for President Yuschenko at that time, it does make one wonder about this poll that is 58 percent against NATO membership. We need more information on the poll and all of its varibles.

Foresttoday wrote:

58 percent of who? Were the pollesters being fair and excluded all those that carry a Russian Passport? Were there as many Western Ukrainians polled as there were in th East? What are the ages of those polled, Were any of those polled under any sort of family pressures from Russia, in other words is mom and Dad living in Russia? What other motives would there be for anyone voting not to look at NATO from all aspects.
As you can tell, I am very skepical of polls, and realize that all polls can be biased unless the it is done very carefully and all factors considered. Even the final poll (vote in Ukraine) was biased prior to the Orange Revolution. When one looks at the revote and the percentages for President Yuschenko at that time, it does make one wonder about this poll that is 58 percent against NATO membership. We need more information on the poll and all of its varibles.

Hello Forest. As usual you make sense on your post. I also am very skeptical of polls or predictions. An example is the poll which had Thomas Dewey defeating Harry Truman for the presidency in the late 40's.

When talking of polls or statistics remember " figures lie and liars figure".

Good to see you on the forum again- look forward to seeing you in email.