Pollsters deny major falsification

The difference between the preliminary official data of the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) of Ukraine and those of the exit poll conducted by three leading public opinion services on March 31, the voting day, is not more than 1%, said Volodymyr Paniotto, director of the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology. He told an April 15 Kyiv press conference that a more than 1 % difference between the CEC and exit poll data was only recorded with respect of one subject of the electoral process, the For United Ukraine bloc, Interfax-Ukraine reports.

According to the updated exit poll results, Our Ukraine polled 24.46% (according to the CEC, 23.7%), the Communist Party 20.51% (19.98%), For a United Ukraine 10.02% (11.7%), the Yuliya Tymoshenko Bloc 7.8% (7.26%), the Socialist Party 5.97% (6.87%), and SDPU(o) 7.13% (6.27%).

Mr. Paniotto pointed out the survey had been done as accurately as possible. In his opinion, the difference can be explained by the fact that the sociological firms did not survey, for instance, prisons and military units. Moreover, when the CEC was announcing the results, it also took into account about 1,950,000 invalid ballots: sociologists do not know how these were distributed among the winning parties and blocs.

According to Mr. Paniotto, even if the For a United Ukraine voting results were tampered with, this does not exceed 2%, so the statistical data say there was no rigging as such. SOCIS company president Mykola Churilov noted that For a United Ukraine had the largest situational electorate of about 35%. “This bloc’s electorate is unstable and transitory,” Mr. Churilov emphasized, noting that people often decided to vote for this bloc right at the polling station on the day of voting. In the pollster’s opinion, if this bloc also wants to win a victory in the next Ukrainian parliamentary elections, “it needs to work very much and painstakingly with the electorate.” Social Monitoring Center Director Olha Balakirieva noted that the Socialist Party was the only one whose voting gains were rather unexpected for the pollsters. In her opinion, SPU voting results confirm that those who intended to cast their vote for this party did not want to indicate this in earlier polls.