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Post-Election Opinions in Kosovo 2008: Findings from an IFES Public Opinion Survey

Survey Description

This report details findings from the IFES post-election public opinion survey in Kosovo. This is the 7th public opinion poll IFES conducted in Kosovo since 2000. Fieldwork for this survey was conducted from January 29 to February 10, 2008. The sample was stratified by seven principal regions of Kosovo and by urban and rural localities according to the OSCE database of voters and the Kosovo Office of Statistics population data. A random selection of 1,256 respondents (18 or older) was drawn, of which 996 are Albanians and 260 are non-Serb ethnic minorities.


Serbs were not included in our sample due to the fact the vast majority of Kosovar Serbs boycotted the November 17, 2007, elections. It was also not possible to include Serbs because of heightened ethnic tensions in anticipation of the pending declaration of independence. The decision to exclude Serbs from this post-election survey stemmed from concerns about the quality of responses from Serb respondents given the expected lack of cooperation and reluctance to provide candid responses. At the time of the survey, Kosovar Serbs were under significant pressure due to the volatility of the political situation. They were uncertain and worried about their future if Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia. There were also logistical and security concerns regarding the safety of survey interviewers in Serb-populated areas should Serb respondents get offended when asked about such a sensitive topic as the elections. Following data collection, the Albanian subset was weighted by age and gender to bring the realized sample in line with the target sample in order to be nationally representative of the adult (18+) population of Kosovo. The data was also weighted by ethnicity to adjust for the purposeful oversample of non-Serb ethnic minorities. The margin of error for a pure random sample of this size is plus/minus 2.77 percentage points within a 95% confidence level. Fieldwork and data processing for the survey was conducted by a Prishtina-based survey firm, Index Kosova, a joint venture with BBSS Gallup. Funding for the survey was provided by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).