Poll: Most Egyptians have never heard of polls

CAIRO (Reuters) - An opinion poll conducted by an Egyptian government body showed that 61 percent of those surveyed had never heard of opinion polls before, the official Middle East News Agency MENA reported on Thursday.

The poll, conducted by the Cabinet's Information and Decision Support Centre, also showed that only 10 percent of those surveyed had taken part in opinion polls before, MENA reported. The report did not mention how many people were surveyed, or why the poll was conducted.

State-owned media, for many the main source of news and information in the most populous Arab country, rarely publish any opinion polls. The concept is also relatively new in the Arab world.

Forty-nine percent of those surveyed said they would like to be polled on the issue of unemployment in Egypt. The government says unemployment stands at 9.9 percent although the figure is widely believed to be much higher.