Organizers face three difficulties in People's Assembly representative sampling

Photo: Andres Haabu

Organizers behind the Rahvakogu (People's Assembly) faced three difficulties getting together the representative sample of residents that will discuss the ideas put forward under the crowdsourcing initiative at the so-called deliberation day in Tallinn on April 6, the daily Postimees said.

Aivar Voog, departmental head at pollster TNS Emor, said that as the first thing the notion that people in Estonia live in two separate information spaces was confirmed again. As Russian-speaking residents had heard nothing about People's Assembly it was difficult to find people ready to attend the deliberation day from East-Viru County and partly also from Tallinn, where very many refused.

There was a large number of refusals also in southern Estonia, where people cited the need to travel a long distance to the capital as the cause why they were not interested.

Third, people with a lower education level tended to be unwilling to take part citing absence of interest in politics.

TNS Emor managed to find 551 people from all over Estonia who are prepared to take part in the deliberation day in the premises of the Song Festival Ground on April 6.

To get a randomly selected representative sample, TNS Emor picked out people from all over Estonia, an approximately equal number of men and women, as well as representatives of all age groups. Other than that no particular restrictions were applied, the newspaper said.