Some Questions for the Lowy Institute

The Lowy Institute was founded in 2003. It conducted the first of its annual LI Polls on 'Australia and the World' in 2005.

Each poll has featured a 'Feelings Thermometer' in which those polled are asked to "rate your feelings toward some countries, with 100 meaning a very warm, favourable feeling," and zero meaning the opposite.

For example, in the latest LIP, New Zealand scores a high of 83% while North Korea scores a low of 29%.

Four Middle Eastern countries are included, receiving the following percentages: Turkey 53%, Egypt 48%, Iraq 35%, and Syria 33%.

Exactly which ME countries are included each year varies from year to year.

Here, for example, are the ratings for ME countries since 2005:

2005 - Middle East 25%; Iran 24%; Iraq 23%
2006 - Israel 55%; Iraq 44%; Iran 43%
2007 - Israel 50%; Iraq 36%; Iran 34%
2008 - United Arab Emirates 55%; Iran 38%; Iraq 37%
2009 - Iran 38%
2010 - Israel 49%; Iraq 40%; Iran 38%
2011 - Egypt 52%; Iraq 35%; Iran 35%; Libya 35%
2012 - Egypt 56%; Libya 41%; Syria 39%; Iran 38%
2013 - Israel 53%; Iran 38%
2014 - Israel 51%; Iran 39%

Quite apart from the issue of polling people who may not even know the difference between Iraq and Iran, to give but one example, why is it that:

a) Iran, Israel's bete noire, appears in every single poll bar the latest?

b) the one Middle Eastern country that makes our political leaders (state & federal) go weak at the knees every time; whose cause is a veritable crusade for the Murdoch press; that gets the benefit of just about every doubt in the rest of the corporate media; and for which Frank Lowy actually carried a gun in 1948, appears in only 5 of the 11 polls?

Just curious...