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An independent digital survey conducted by more than 20 Cuban media outlets revealed that 82.2% of participants identified the lack of civil and political liberties as one of the main problems in Cuba, according to the final results published on encuesta-cuba.netlify.app after the survey closed on May 1, 2026.
The initiative was launched on April 27 by independent media such as elToque, CiberCuba, and El Estornudo, and concluded with 42,263 participants, of which 58% expressed their opinions from within the island, 42% from the diaspora, and 94 responses were excluded (0.22%).
Question 8 of the survey asked participants to identify up to three main problems in the country. After the lack of civil and political liberties, which was cited by 82.2%, 74.8% pointed to government inefficiency and stagnation, while 52.6% highlighted the economic crisis and shortages of basic goods.
Institutional corruption was identified as the main problem by 47.8% of respondents, while mass emigration and loss of human capital received 7.3%.
The most notable fact that contrasts with the official discourse of the regime is that only 4.7% of the participants identified the U.S. embargo and external pressures as one of the main problems facing the country, a figure that dismantles the narrative that the dictatorship has maintained for decades to justify the failure of the model.
The other results of the survey reinforce the picture of mass rejection of the system: 94% of respondents expressed being very dissatisfied with the current political system, 95% consider a political change to be extremely urgent, and 99% support eliminating the Partido Comunista as the sole party.
The evaluation of Miguel Díaz-Canel averaged 1.11 out of five, with 93.7% of participants giving him the lowest possible rating.
"The respondents are overwhelmingly calling for a change of system in Cuba," stated José Jasán Nieves, director of elToque, in an interview with the magazine El Estornudo.
The regime reacted by attacking the survey even before the results were known. Through official channels such as Razones de Cuba, it questioned its representativeness in a maneuver that analysts and independent journalists have characterized as a sign of fear in light of the scale of citizen participation.
The authorities also blocked the survey URL on the same day of its launch, forcing many participants within the island to connect via VPN in order to respond. The independent journalist Mónica Baró defended the value of the results despite the methodological limitations inherent in a self-selection survey in a country without free access to the internet.
The exercise takes place in a context of sustained repression: following the protests on July 11, 2021, the number of political prisoners in Cuba exceeded 800, with sentences of up to 30 years. An international study rated Cuba as the second worst democracy in Latin America in 2022, with only 2.59 out of 10 and zero points in electoral process and pluralism.
The platform encuesta-cuba.netlify.app announced that it will soon publish the full report with the final and disaggregated results.
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