Are Israeli voting bots skewing Irish ‘boycott Eurovision’ polls?

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A poll was published on TheJournal.ie yesterday (Friday 15 June) Ask a question The question “Do you think RTÉ should boycott the Eurovision Song Contest in Israel next year?” yielded some interesting results.

As of 12 noon today (Saturday 16th)^day The results for June are No: 50% Yes: 46% have no idea: 2%

This is a notable shift, as turnout had been steady between 70% and 67% until yesterday afternoon. Yes.

This figure is consistent with all other polls conducted by TheJournal.ie on the Palestinian issue. The Wall Street Journal asked “Do you think Ireland should expel its ambassador to Israel over the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza?” Yes: 67% No: 27% have no idea: 4% In July 2014, it required Similar questions“Do you support the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador to Ireland?”. Again, the result was Yes: 66% No: 27% have no idea: 5% September 2011 It asks “Should Ireland support Palestine’s full membership in the United Nations?” Again the results were as follows: Yes: 71% No: 14% not yet: 9% have no idea: 3%

A slightly outlier is a July 2014 poll that asked “Should Irish politicians return to discussing the Israel-Gaza crisis?” Although not on the same scale, the vast majority (56%) said YesOnly 40% of people said No and 2% have no idea.

Averaging the “pro-Palestine” votes in the first four polls, we get an absolute majority of 65%. Leaving aside the somewhat ambiguous question of whether politicians will come back to discuss the issue, we get 68%. So, basically, a 68% – 65% majority in favor of Palestine.

Yet in yesterday’s poll, only 45% supported Palestine. (Note, No Within an hour of me writing this, the vote had reached 51%).

It’s flavorful, isn’t it? Something clearly looked like a Hasbara attack.

Let’s look at the numbers involved here. Taking a random sample of the ‘hot’ daily polls on TheJournal.ie over the past month, we found an average of 13,917 votes. By far the most ‘hot’ polls were those around topics such as abortion, benefits and rickshaw regulation. The most popular poll, with 16,321 respondents, asked whether people receiving child benefit should be means-tested.

However, the poll has a whopping 24,623 respondents, and will probably hit 25,000 by the time I finish writing this. That’s over 10,000 more votes than the average for any poll on TheJournal.ie, and 8,300 more than the other most-voted poll in recent weeks.

Now, if we reduce these approximately 8,300 “excess” votes, two interesting things will happen.

The voting figures we got were approximately 16,000 respondents – is roughly in line with the normal poll for the most ‘hot’ topics on TheJournal.ie.
If we assume that these extra votes were cast for the ‘No’ side (which they were – the ‘No’ vote was increasing by about 1.5% every hour), and then we eliminate them, we get a ‘Yes’ figure of… 69%. This is exactly in line with the historical average of pro-Palestine voting on TheJournal.ie.

Now, isn’t that interesting?

So what happened? The high turnout – which lasted overnight and into the next day with no signs of slowing down (most TheJournal.ie polls disappeared after a day or so) suggests that either there was an organised campaign by Israeli supporters outside of Ireland (the idea that apartheid Israel has more than 12,000 loyal supporters in Ireland is ludicrous) or that the vote was a “political exercise” by the opposition. we know That These activities exists. Another possibility is Automated “voting bots” is using.

It’s possible that it’s a bit of both, but the consistency of the downvotes suggests that this is mostly bots. This is interesting (and worrisome) because while we’ve heard a lot about Russia’s alleged Online distractions In democratic countries we hardly hear about similar interventions by Israel and its satellite states against the Zionist lobby. It would certainly be interesting to see the distribution of countries by IP address voting, and one of my colleagues asked TheJournal.ie to publish this information…

However, it does suggest that the Eurovision issue does unsettle Israel. The apartheid state is desperate to host the event in order to legitimize its colonization of occupied Jerusalem, a move recently endorsed by the Trump regime but rejected by most EU countries. Such urgency has led some to suggest that the Eurovision polls are rigged – although I have no real expertise in such matters and therefore cannot comment. In response to a petition of more than 26,000 people in Iceland calling for a boycott, the Israeli consulate Meet The head of Iceland’s national broadcaster RÚV has expressed concern. The European Broadcasting Union (Eurovision’s governing body) has Make noise The Israeli Minister of Culture, Miri Regev, who has a low level of education, said that if the games were not held in Jerusalem, then Israel would It shouldn’t be held at all.This question affects their efforts to use art to unravel the oppression of Palestinians.

Take action

In Ireland, in response to Palestinian appeal Artists, journalists and civil society groups, the Irish-Palestinian Solidarity Movement, the Friends of the Palestinian Trade Union and PalFest Ireland are launching a campaign for Ireland to boycott the 2019 Games in Israel. Please sign and share the petition online here.

Other follow-up actions are being prepared, so stay tuned www.ipsc.ie Or join IPSC Mailing List to get updates.

Update: As of the time of this posting, at 2pm this afternoon, Saturday 16^day The results for June are No: 51% Yes: 45% have no idea: 2%

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