Where will the WAPOR 2026 Conference be held?

The conference will take place in Mexico City, MEX.

What is the primary focus of the WAPOR 2026 Conference?

The conference's main theme is "Public Opinion Research in an Emerging Multipolar World Order," focusing on how public opinion interacts with shifting global power dynamics.

What is the format of the WAPOR 2026 Conference?

The conference is an in-person event, bringing together researchers and practitioners in Mexico City.

WAPOR 2026 Conference: Public Opinion Research in an Emerging Multipolar World Order

Name: WAPOR 2026 Conference: Public Opinion Research in an Emerging Multipolar World Order
Start: 2026-10-26T00:00:00Z
End: 2026-10-29T00:00:00Z
Location: Mexico City

Oct 26–29, 2026Mexico City, MexicoIn-person

Registration open

The WAPOR 2026 Conference, themed "Public Opinion Research in an Emerging Multipolar World Order," will convene in Mexico City, Mexico. This event focuses on the critical role of public opinion in shaping and responding to a world order characterized by multiple centers of power. Researchers and practitioners will gather to explore how public sentiment influences international relations and domestic policy within this evolving global landscape.

Committees & topics

Topics
Public Opinion Research in an Emerging Multipolar World Order · Global Shifts and Public Opinion · Public Opinion and Conflict Resolution · Political Polarization and Contemporary Risks to Democracy · Geopolitical Tensions and the Rise of Defense and Security · Polling as a Tool for Manipulation · Fears of Repercussions and Misreporting in Illiberal Regimes · The Complexity of Polling Across High-, Middle- and Low-Income Countries

Why it matters

In an increasingly multipolar world, understanding public opinion is paramount for effective diplomacy and international cooperation. As power dynamics shift away from a unipolar model, the collective attitudes and beliefs of populations across different nations gain significant weight in global decision-making processes. This conference offers a vital platform for examining these complex interactions.

The insights shared at this conference can illuminate how public sentiment can either facilitate or impede diplomatic efforts, influence trade relations, and shape responses to global challenges. For diplomats and policymakers, grasping the nuances of public opinion in various contexts is crucial for formulating strategies that resonate with diverse populations and achieve desired outcomes on the international stage. The discussions will provide a deeper understanding of the forces driving public sentiment in an era of geopolitical transformation.

How to prepare

To prepare for discussions on public opinion in a multipolar world, consider how different national narratives are constructed and consumed. Understanding the methodologies used in public opinion research is essential, particularly when evaluating data from diverse cultural and political contexts. Familiarity with the concept of "hidden stakeholders" can provide a framework for identifying influential groups whose opinions might not be immediately apparent through traditional surveys.

Engaging with the conference theme also requires an appreciation for "dynamic analysis" in assessing public opinion, recognizing that sentiments are not static but evolve in response to events and policy changes. Furthermore, exploring "engagement strategies" for communicating with and understanding various publics will be beneficial. A "stakeholder mapping workshop" approach could be useful in identifying key actors and their perspectives within the context of a multipolar order, offering a structured way to analyze the influence of different groups on public opinion.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 1 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Mexico

As the host nation, Mexico provides a significant regional context for discussions on public opinion in an emerging multipolar world.

Role in topic

Hosting the conference in Mexico City places a spotlight on the perspectives of countries in North America, offering a unique vantage point on how global power shifts are perceived and experienced in this region. The local context can enrich discussions on public opinion research methodologies and findings.

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Public Opinion Research in an Emerging Multipolar World Order

The post-Cold War unipolar moment, in which U.S.-led liberal institutions set the dominant frame for global public opinion research, has given way to a more contested multipolar landscape. The rise of China as a peer competitor, the reassertion of Russian power through the war in Ukraine, the growing diplomatic weight of India, Brazil, South Africa and the Gulf states, and the expansion of BRICS+ have all complicated the assumption of a single 'international community' whose views can be measured along Western axes. Cross-national surveys such as the World Values Survey, Pew Global Attitudes, Gallup World Poll, Afrobarometer, Latinobarómetro and the Arab Barometer increasingly show divergent publics on questions of democracy, sovereignty, sanctions, and global governance. For public opinion researchers, multipolarity poses both methodological and normative challenges. Comparability across regimes with different media ecosystems, varying degrees of state control over fieldwork, and culturally distinct response styles is harder to defend. At the same time, demand for reliable cross-national data is rising as foreign ministries, multilateral bodies and private actors seek to understand 'the Global South' as a political constituency rather than a residual category. Debates now center on how to design instruments that travel across blocs without smuggling in Western or authoritarian priors, and on how the discipline itself should be governed when its leading associations, funders and journals remain concentrated in a handful of countries.

Key players

Global Shifts and Public Opinion

Over the past decade, a series of overlapping shocks — the 2008 financial crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Gaza war, accelerating climate impacts, and the diffusion of generative AI — have reshaped how publics around the world understand power, security and prosperity. Long-running barometers show declining trust in multilateral institutions in many Western publics, rising approval of non-Western powers across parts of the Global South, and growing convergence on concerns such as inflation, migration and climate, even where policy preferences diverge. These shifts have policy consequences. Governments increasingly cite public opinion to justify reshoring, industrial policy, sanctions regimes, and alignment choices between Washington, Beijing and Moscow. Yet the same data reveal that publics often hold more ambivalent, transactional and non-aligned views than elite rhetoric suggests — particularly in middle powers such as Indonesia, Turkey, South Africa and Brazil. The research community is grappling with how to track these realignments in close to real time, how to distinguish durable value change from event-driven volatility, and how to communicate uncertainty to policymakers who treat polls as strategic intelligence.

Key players

Public Opinion and Conflict Resolution

Public opinion has long been recognized as both a constraint on and a resource for conflict resolution. Classic peace processes — Northern Ireland, South Africa, Colombia — relied on referenda, deliberative polling and sustained attitudinal research to gauge readiness for compromise. Contemporary conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, the South Caucasus and the Sahel have generated new demand for survey data on war aims, acceptable concessions, transitional justice and the legitimacy of external mediators. At the same time, conducting rigorous research in or near active conflict zones raises severe access, safety and ethical concerns. Researchers are debating how to capture the views of displaced populations, how to integrate digital trace data with traditional sampling where face-to-face work is impossible, and how to avoid instrumentalization by belligerents who weaponize polls to claim popular mandates. There is also growing interest in 'opinion diplomacy' — the use of cross-national survey evidence to identify zones of possible agreement between adversarial publics — and in the risks of premature polling that hardens positions before negotiating space exists.

Key players

Political Polarization and Contemporary Risks to Democracy

Affective and ideological polarization have intensified in many democracies since the mid-2010s, driven by social media transformations, economic dislocation, migration politics, and the strategic mobilization of cultural grievances. Studies from V-Dem, Freedom House and the Varieties of Democracy project document nearly two decades of net democratic backsliding, with notable cases in Hungary, India, Turkey, the United States, Brazil and Israel. Survey research consistently finds rising out-party animus, declining trust in elections, and growing willingness among partisans to tolerate anti-democratic behavior by co-partisan leaders. For the public opinion community, polarization raises difficult questions about measurement and responsibility. Standard items on left-right placement, trust in institutions, and support for democracy may obscure deeper realignments around identity, sovereignty and 'the people' versus 'the elite'. Researchers face pressure both to document democratic erosion and to avoid contributing to it through framing, leaked microdata, or partisan commissioning. Debates over depolarization interventions — corrections, deliberative mini-publics, cross-partisan contact — increasingly draw on experimental survey methods.

Key players

Geopolitical Tensions and the Rise of Defense and Security

Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, intensifying U.S.-China competition over Taiwan and technology, and conflicts across the Middle East and Sahel have driven the sharpest rise in global military spending since the Cold War. SIPRI data show worldwide defense expenditure surpassing record highs in successive years, with European NATO members moving toward or beyond the 2% of GDP benchmark, Japan undertaking a historic defense buildup, and Gulf states deepening arms acquisitions. Publics in many frontline states have shifted markedly on questions of conscription, nuclear deterrence and alliance commitments. Public opinion research is central to understanding the durability of this securitization. Surveys probe willingness to support Ukraine 'as long as it takes,' tolerance for higher defense budgets at the expense of welfare, attitudes toward NATO and AUKUS-style arrangements, and threat perceptions vis-à-vis China and Russia. Researchers must navigate growing classification of relevant data, government commissioning of strategic-communications polling, and the challenge of measuring opinion on novel domains such as cyber, space and AI-enabled warfare where public knowledge is thin but consequences are profound.

Key players

Polling as a Tool for Manipulation

Polls have always been vulnerable to misuse, but the combination of cheap online panels, generative AI, opaque sponsorship and viral social-media amplification has expanded the toolkit. 'Push polls' designed to plant suggestions rather than measure attitudes, fabricated or selectively released surveys, partisan aggregators that cherry-pick favorable results, and AI-generated synthetic respondents all threaten to pollute the information environment. Recent elections in the United States, Brazil, Romania, the Philippines and several African states have featured disputes over the provenance and integrity of polling. The research community is debating how to defend professional standards in this environment. WAPOR, AAPOR, ESOMAR and national associations have updated transparency codes, but enforcement is uneven, and platforms rarely distinguish methodologically rigorous polls from propaganda dressed in numerical form. Key questions include how to certify legitimate pollsters without entrenching incumbents, how to detect AI-generated survey fraud at the data level, and how to communicate uncertainty so that good-faith polls are not weaponized as 'manipulation' whenever they displease political actors.

Key players

Fears of Repercussions and Misreporting in Illiberal Regimes

Survey research in illiberal and authoritarian contexts faces a structural problem: respondents may rationally hide their true views to avoid social, professional or legal consequences. 'Preference falsification,' first theorized in the context of late-Soviet societies, has been documented in contemporary Russia, China, Iran, Belarus, Venezuela and elsewhere. Headline approval ratings of leaders and wars in such systems often diverge sharply from results obtained through list experiments, endorsement experiments, conjoint designs or anonymized digital methods. The stakes are high. Misreading authoritarian publics can lead foreign governments to overestimate regime stability or popular support for aggression, while underestimating latent dissent. At the same time, naive reporting of headline numbers from these contexts — particularly during wartime — risks laundering propaganda. Researchers are developing methodological toolkits to estimate the size of the 'spiral of silence,' triangulate across data sources, and protect both respondents and local fieldworkers. Ethical debates focus on when fieldwork should continue under repression, when it should pause, and how to publish responsibly without endangering participants.

Key players

The Complexity of Polling Across High-, Middle- and Low-Income Countries

Polling infrastructure varies enormously across the global income spectrum. High-income countries typically combine declining but still functional address-based sampling, probability online panels, and rich administrative data, though they face plummeting response rates and rising costs. Middle-income countries — Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, Indonesia, South Africa — often rely on a mix of face-to-face, telephone (including RDD on mobile) and online panels of uneven quality, with strong domestic industries but uneven regulation. In many low-income countries, sampling frames are weak or absent, literacy and language diversity complicate instruments, and face-to-face interviewing remains essential but expensive and security-sensitive. These asymmetries have implications for cross-national comparison and for the global knowledge base. Programs such as Afrobarometer, Arab Barometer, Latinobarómetro and AmericasBarometer have invested heavily in methodological harmonization, but headline 'world opinion' findings still over-represent contexts where polling is cheap and easy. Debates focus on mobile and IVR methods in low-connectivity environments, the ethics of incentive structures across income levels, the role of local research capacity-building, and how funders and journals can avoid privileging methods feasible only in wealthy contexts.

Key players