Related videos:
CiberCuba is one of more than 20 independent Cuban media outlets that participated in the collective survey "Cuba: political and social perspectives."
In that context, José Jasán Nieves, director of elTOQUE, granted an interview to journalist Katia Monteagudo for El Estornudo, in which he emphasized the most significant finding of the survey: "The respondents, overwhelmingly, are calling for a change of system in Cuba."
The initiative was launched on April 23 and remains open until May 1 on encuestascuba.net, featuring 32 questions divided into seven sections on politics, economics, exile, and potential transition scenarios.
Nieves described the level of participation as "a great civic gesture" and "an act of liberation" in the face of the regime's pressure to simulate popular support.
The preliminary results show strong rejection of the system: 94% of respondents expressed deep dissatisfaction with the current political system, 75.1% support a transition to a liberal democracy with a market economy, and 99% believe that the singular Communist Party should be eliminated.
Miguel Díaz-Canel receives an average rating of 1.11 out of five, with 93.7% of participants giving the Cuban leader the lowest possible score.
In just 48 hours, the survey gathered nearly 22,000 responses: 12,711 from within Cuba and 9,191 from abroad, numbers achieved despite the regime blocking the URL of the questionnaire from the very day of its launch.
The Cuban regime blocked access to the independent survey, forcing participants within the island to use VPNs in order to respond.
Nieves explained that once the database has been cleaned up, they will be able to identify how many responses recorded as external actually came from within Cuba: "When we clean up the database, we will be able to see how many people who appear to be outside of Cuba were actually inside and compile their data."
The director of elToque openly acknowledges the methodological biases of the exercise: there is an overrepresentation of urban residents from Havana, of university students and graduates, and only those with internet access can participate.
However, he insists that the volume achieved demonstrates something greater: "If, despite all the difficulties, this survey has obtained such a volume of responses, it indicates that the consensuses being reflected here within Cuba are much larger than they appear, especially for [official] propaganda, but even for some who pretend to be neutral and refuse to acknowledge what is happening."
Nieves frames the survey within the current political context: "Everything that has been happening since the beginning of the year, particularly the increasing pressure from the Trump administration on Cuba, has opened up the Cuban political landscape, and people are reconsidering, for the first time in a long time, the possibility of real change."
The ideological apparatus of the regime reacted immediately: the site Razones de Cuba, linked to State Security, characterized the survey as a "statistical fraud" and a "propaganda setup" even before the first results were published.
Journalist Mónica Baró defended the initiative by stating that "this survey has been blocked in Cuba because the regime is not interested in knowing what the population thinks," while only 5.3% of respondents identify the embargo as the main problem in the country, compared to 82.5% who point to the lack of civil and political freedoms.
The survey closes on the night of May 1, after which the organizers will finalize the database to provide definitive results of what Nieves defines not as a traditional statistical exercise, but as "a civic exercise to gather opinions in the most structured way we could from Cubans both in Cuba and outside of Cuba, and to compare them with one another."
Filed under: