INFOGRAPHIC: Sisi’s Approval Ratings over the Past Year

How have President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s approval ratings changed over the past year? Independent research center, Baseera, has conducted five polls over the past year, beginning in August 2014 and ending in June 2015.

One Year On

Over the course of the coming days, EgyptSource will publish a series of blog posts highlighting milestones marking Sisi’s first year in power. An in-depth look at the domestic politics, foreign policy, human rights, economic developments, legislation, and the media will give a comprehensive overview of the past year.

The chart below shows the subtle shifts in Sisi’s popularity. His highest approval rating came in June 2015, with the total percentage of those approving or highly approving of Sisi coming in at 90 percent, up from 89 percent in the previous month’s poll. His highest disapproval rating was in August 2014, totaling 8 percent.

August 2014: This poll was conducted eighty days after Sisi’s election. Major events that took place in that period include:

  • The dispersal of the pro-Mohamed Morsi sit-in at the Raba’a al-Adaweya and al-Nahda squares in Cairo.
  • Former President, Hosni Mubarak, is removed from prison and placed under house arrest
  • Thirty-seven pro-Morsi protesters are killed while in custody after officials accuse them of attempting a prison break at Abu Zaabal Prison
  • Supreme Administrative Court dissolves Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party
  • Suez Canal project to dig a 72-kilometre canal announced by Sisi funded by investment certificates from the Egyptian public


September 2014
: This poll was conducted 100 days after Sisi’s election. Major events that took place in that period include:

  • Egypt’s prosecutor ordered the arrest of nine men suspected of participating in an alleged same-sex wedding
  • Brotherhood members Mohamed al-Beltagy and Safwat Hegazy were sentenced to twenty years in prison
  • Egypt witnesses an increase in decapitated bodies found in the Sinai region


November 2014
: This poll was conducted five months after Sisi’s elections. Major events that took place in that period include:

  • Rafah border to the Gaza strip closed and three month ‘State of Emergency’ imposed after attack on military personnel kills thirty-one soldiers in North Sinai
  • Sisi issues decree allowing referral of criminals guilty of harming state facilities to military court
  • Sinai border begins evacuations in an effort to eliminate the creation and use of tunnels to cross the border to Gaza
  • Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis pledges allegiance to the Islamic State, renames themselves “State of Sinai”


December 2014
: This poll was conducted six months after Sisi’s election. Major events that took place in that period include:

  • Charges against former president, Hosni Mubarak, are dropped
  • Terrorist entities law is issued
  • Political activist, Ahmed Douma, is sentenced to three years hard labor in prison by the Cairo Criminal Court for contempt of the court


May 2015
: This poll was conducted eleven months after Sisi’s election. Major events that took place in that period include:

  • Al Jazeera Journalists freed from prison
  • Islamic State releases video beheading twenty Egyptian Coptic Christians in Libya, Egypt responds with airstrikes in eastern Libya, in coordination with the internationally recognized Libyan government
  • Former President Mohamed Morsi is sentenced to twenty years in prison on charges of inciting violence against protesters


June 2015
: This poll was conducted a year after Sisi’s election. Major events that took place in that period include: 

  • Ain Shams engineering student Islam Atitu is taken from class, and is later found dead. Police claim he was involved in the assassination of a high-ranking Matareya police officer, an accusation his fellow students deny
  • The MInister of Justice resigns amid outrage over classist remarks made in a television interview. Ahmed al-Zend is appointed as his replacement. 
  • Former president Mohamed Morsi is sentenced to death over 2011 prison break 

Image: Photo: A supporter of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi carries a poster of him as she joins others in shouting slogans against the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups, after collecting signatures for a petition in downtown Cairo, November 13, 2014 (Reuters/Amr Abdallah Dalsh)