and another 6% said they didn't know or didn't answer.

Overall, 48% of those surveyed said the Sandinista government is not democratic. Poll director Marvin Ortega of Itztani offers four possible explanations for this result:

— people are not completely satisfied with the democratic openings created since 1979;

— the survey results are a rejection of the model of democracy developed by the Sandinistas;

— the model the Sandinistas have been trying to implement has been affected by the war and its impacts, especially the emergency law and the prohibition on strikes, which limit civil liberties;

— the tension established in the first years of the revolution between concepts of revolution and of democracy, in which revolution was seen as a way to advance society, democracy as a model of bourgeois domination. ManyCentral America. Of the 9% who said they identified with the Liberal, Conservative, or Social Christian parties, 37% also said US policies in Central America were bad or terrible, 32% said they were fair, and 21% called them good or excellent. Forty-three percent of those who did not identify with any party thought US policies were bad or terrible, a view held by 90% of Sandinista supporters.

The State Department might be reassured that almost half the opposition supporters (47%) described as bad or terrible Cuban and Soviet Union policies in Central America. But there was still a group among the opposition who were impressed with the socialist countries: 28% said Cuban policies were good or excellent and 31% thought the same of the Soviet Union's stance. Among those