FORECASTS AND RESULTS OF BELARUS' PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

2001-09-14

FORECASTS AND RESULTS OF BELARUS' PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

by Leonid MIKHEICHIKOV, director of BelaPAN's Sociological Service "Zerkalo" (Mirror)

BelaPAN's Sociological Service "Zerkalo" provides the combined data of polls taken by independent and government sociological services that evaluated the population's attitude to the presidential election. The data are compared to the preliminary results of the Central Commission for Elections and National Referenda (CEC).

Data on Belarus

The polls under consideration were held by the following sociological services:

- The Independent Institute of Socio-Economic and Political Studies (IISEPS) headed by Doctor of Sociology Oleg Manayev. The IISPES interviewed 1,499 respondents aged 18 and older in June and 1,518 respondents in August 2001.

- The sociological laboratory NOVAK headed by Doctor of Sociology Andrei Vardomatsky. From August 22 to 26, the NOVAK conducted a national poll of 1,108 respondents. The data available is not full. There are doubts about the credibility of the poll's results.

- The Institute of Socio-Political Studies under the Presidential Administration (ISPS) headed by Candidate of Philosophy Yevgeny Matusevich. On August 30, the state-run newspaper Narodnaya Gazeta published the results of the poll of 1,574 people interviewed throughout Belarus and in the capital Minsk. According to the newspaper, the poll was taken from August 25 to 28, 2001. What was published, however, were the results of the August 10-20 poll.

Unlike private sociological services, state-controlled centers often kept the lid on the results of their polls. The data released to the public was of questionable accuracy.

Tables 1 and 2 show some of the polls' results. The figures refer to percent.

Table 1. The voters' intention to vote in the election.

The sociological services predicted a rather high voter turnout in the September 9 vote. The IISEPS and the ISPS came up with almost equal forecasts. According to the CEC's preliminary results, 82.55 percent of eligible voters came to the polls. The NOVAK's forecast was far from reality as usual.

The presidential Institute of Socio-Political Studies did not fail to demonstrate loyalty to the authorities, predicting a 62 percent support to Lukashenko. "Lukashenko has a good "safety margin" to win in the first round of the presidential election", the ISPS director Yevgeny Matusevich told reporters gathered in the Minsk-based International Education Center in early May. The NOVAK also predicted Lukashenko's victory in the first round, though with a smaller margin (see Table 2).

Table 2. Presidential candidates' ratings. (In this closed question the respondents were offered the candidates' names to tick)

Results on Minsk

The complete data on the electoral behavior in Minsk are available only from BelaPAN's sociological service Zerkalo. The polls evaluated 500 Minsk residents aged 18 and older on a quota sample basis reflecting the respondents' gender, age, and education. The polls were taken from April 28 to May 3, June 12 to 14, July 10 to 13, July 30 to August 1, August 14 to 17 and August 23 to 26.

The Minsk-based Institute of Socio-Economic and Political Research headed by Doctor of Sociology Vladimir Bobkov interviewed 980 Minsk residents on a quota sample basis from May 21 to 25.

Some data on Minsk were provided by the ISPS. The data were derived from its August national poll of 1,574 respondents. The number of Minsk respondents was therefore about 250 people, which is not enough to make credible conclusions.

Table 3. The voters' intention to vote in the election.

Table 3 shows that the sociological services indicated a high voter turnout on the election day. The polls also revealed a stable percentage of Minsk residents (about 6 percent) who were going to vote ahead of the polling day (see Table 4).

Table 4. Intentions of Minsk residents to vote early

There is a notable difference in the evaluation of the presidential candidates' ratings in Minsk by the presidential and the independent sociological services. According to the poll of 250 Minsk residents by the ISPS, 52 percent of them would cast their votes for Lukashenko, against a third out of 500 respondents polled by Zerkalo (see Table 5). But if 52 percent forecast by the ISPS are derived from 80 percent of those who would go to the polls according to the ISPS, the figure would be 42 percent. According to the CEC, 57.32 percent of Minsk residents voted for Lukashenko (see Table 5).

Table 5. Presidential candidates' ratings in Minsk. (In this closed question the respondents were offered the candidates' names to tick)