The Government has approved this Tuesday in the Council of Ministers to expand the endowment of the Sociological Research Center (CIS) with 3.28 million euros, so that it has a sufficient budget to carry out more "studies and technical work" in an election year.
This credit supplement is added to the 12.66 million euros that the body chaired by José Félix Tezanos had for this year 2023, according to what appears in the General State Budgets for this year and which are now insufficient for the surveys that the Executive wants you to carry out in this exercise.
As Moncloa explained, the CIS conducts its interviews through a commission from the public company TRAGSATEC. The contract that is in force expires on May 29, with which the Government needs to sign a new one and provide it with a budget so that it is active from May 30. In addition, the Executive wants to sign an addendum to the current contract to get the CIS to have more interviewers. This increase in personnel will also be maintained in the new contract and its objective is that the body can "adequately carry out electoral surveys", as stated in the references of the Council of Ministers.
In order to undertake this reinforcement and the renewal of the contract, the Ministry of Finance has authorized a credit modification that has been approved today by the Council of Ministers.
Moncloa justifies the extension with which "during the year 2023 the CIS must face the preparation of surveys of at least two electoral processes of great importance and magnitude. One is related to the regional and local elections that will be held on May 28 and another, the one related to the general elections that are planned as a consequence of the end of the legislature in the fourth quarter of the year".
"In order to guarantee the representativeness and adequacy of the surveys, the sample sizes are high and their field work must be carried out in a limited period and not excessively long in time," they explain.
The body headed by Tezanos has been the target of criticism in the last year for the results of its surveys, always contradictory to that of the country's main sociological panels, which have been yielding very different results.
The manipulation in the questions is another of the reproaches that has been made to the CIS, attached to the Ministry of the Presidency, since it has omitted important and current issues, such as the impression that the reduction of sentences for rapists generates in those surveyed as a result of the Law of 'Only yes is yes'. On other occasions, the CIS has asked directed questions that led to a specific answer, as occurred in the middle of the controversy over the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary.
All these criticisms lead many citizens to question the validity and usefulness of their surveys, but the Government believes in their importance -especially in electoral times- and for this reason it has increased its endowment for the regional elections in May and the weekend general elections. of year.
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