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MEASURING POLITICAL SUPPORT UNDER CENSORSHIP: REZA PAHLAVI’S TRUE SUPPORT AMONG NAMED-PREFERENCE ANTI-REGIME IRANIANS (2024–2026)
Abstract
Recent surveys substantiate that Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi is a prominent opposition figure among Iranians who oppose the Islamic Republic of Iran. However, research indicates that direct questioning in authoritarian states may misconstrue the support for anti-regime figures. This paper estimates Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi’s true level of support among Iranians who (a) oppose the Islamic Republic AND (b) actively name a preferred political leader — the politically engaged, preference-holding segment most relevant to democratic transition scenarios. In this report, we deploy Margaret E. Roberts’ Fear-Friction-Flooding censorship framework, Bayesian preference falsification correction, digital revealed preference analysis, and protest-calibrated estimation to data from the GAMAAN survey of 77,216 respondents (June 2024) [1], Instagram metrics (2022–2026), and the January 2026 nationwide protests (≈ 5 million participants). We find that Pahlavi commands 59.0% of raw support among anti-Islamic Republic Iranians who named a political figure, rising to a corrected 77.0% after accounting for censorship-driven preference falsification, temporal growth, and revealed preferences from protest participation. Sensitivity analysis across 54 parameter scenarios yields an interquartile range of 70.0% − 83.4%. Among Iranians with an active political preference who want the Islamic Republic replaced, Pahlavi holds a commanding supermajority that has grown substantially since mid-2024.
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejpss.v9i2.2283
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