Fact-check: Gallup Pakistan survey does not show 94% of Pakistanis want to leave country
Gallup did ask similar questions last year, but findings of the polls were very different from what was being portrayed online
Updated Monday Jul 22 2024
A viral post shared on social media alleges that according to a recent survey by Gallup Pakistan 94% of Pakistanis want to leave the country.
The claim is false. Gallup Pakistan did not publish any such survey.
Claim
On July 10, a user on X, formerly known as Twitter, claimed that as per the latest survey by Gallup Pakistan, around 94% of Pakistanis want to leave the country.
“Thank you violators of the constitution,” the user added, mocking the government, “In just two years you have made the whole country hate itself.”
The post has been shared and liked over 2,800 and 7,600 times, respectively, at the time of writing.
On the same day, another X user also made a similar claim. “Latest Gallup survey finds that 94% Pakistanis want to leave Pakistan, while during the tenure of Imran Khan, 100% overseas Pakistanis wanted to return to the country,” the user wrote.
The post has garnered over 73,000 views to date.
Identical claims were shared by several media outlets as well.
Fact
Gallup Pakistan, an Islamabad-based survey research agency, has not conducted any such poll recently or published any such findings.
Bilal Ijaz Gilani, the executive director of Gallup Pakistan, debunked the viral online claims as “fake”.
“We have not done this survey,” he clarified over the phone. Gilani further added that his organisation did ask similar questions last year, but the findings of the polls were very different from what was being portrayed online.
One survey, published on December 19, 2023, found that more than half of the Pakistanis, specifically 56% of the respondents who wanted to leave the country, cited low earnings in Pakistan as the most significant reason for wanting to emigrate.
The 2023 survey can be viewed here.
Another similar survey was published on December 18, 2023, which found that 71% of Pakistanis believe that no matter how bad the situation is in Pakistan they will not leave for another country. The survey can be found here.
Thus, no survey has been published by Gallup Pakistan that finds that 94% Pakistanis wish to move abroad. Neither was any such poll findings shared by Gallup International.
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