Candidate X among the Leaders

The official start of the presidential election campaign is just two weeks away. What are the sociological parameters of the coming elections? What is crystal clear and what remains shrouded in mystery? We’ll try to answer these questions on the basis of the results of a survey of 1,200 respondents, which was conducted by the Democratic Initiatives Foundation and the SOCIS Center between May 27 and June 4. Opposition representative Viktor Yushchenko and current Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych have been topping the polls for quite a long time. The latest sociological survey was no exception: if elections were to be held next Sunday, Our Ukraine leader Viktor Yushchenko and Viktor Yanukovych would win the first round, polling 27% and 18% of the vote, respectively. In the past month both candidates buffed up their “electoral muscles” a little, each increasing his following by 1%. The second conclusion reached by the pollsters is that the “runoff with a Communist” scenario seems to have no earthly chances because Communist leader Petro Symonenko’s electoral rating has frozen at a stable level of 9-10%. The survey in question shows that Symonenko can only count on 9% of the vote. In all probability, both the government and the opposition will no longer need to “nurture” the Communist leader as an opponent.

Now-a few words about intrigues. The first is who will win the presidential race. Sociologists’ attempts to identify the name of the runoff winner are so far not as successful as their forecasts about the first-round results. Although polls show that Mr. Yushchenko stands a greater chance of winning than Mr. Yanukovych, the margin is sometimes so narrow (about 6%) that it is difficult to make a clear prediction. Thirteen percent of respondents find it difficult to make a choice in the first round, 5% would prefer to ignore the elections (perhaps because they consider neither of the two candidates a sympathetic leader), and 6% intend to vote against all. As to the second round, 12% of respondents oppose both candidates, 10% are undecided, and 7% may refrain from voting altogether. In other words, “Candidate X” remains one of the leaders of the upcoming campaign.

Mystery No. 2-of a politico-sociological nature-is who exactly will take part in the election campaign. For the time being, sociologists have drawn up a “voting list” that includes not only the two chief candidates but also a number of other politicians from both the pro-government and opposition camps. Asked by The Day whether it would be good to short- list only those candidates who have announced, in some fashion, their intention to run, president of the Democratic Initiatives Foundation Ilko Kucheriv said that, on the contrary, it would be better to expand the list because then there would be far more candidates. Pollsters have been regularly including Yuliya Tymoshenko, Oleksandr Moroz, Natalia Vitrenko, Anatoly Kinakh, Serhiy Tyhypko, Viktor Medvedchuk, Valery Pustovoitenko, Heorhiy Kyrpa, and Volodymyr Lyvyn in all recent surveys.

As far as ratings are concerned, respondents’ answers concerning their support for the governmental and opposition candidates seem rather strange. For instance, the poll indicates that 36% of the population is ready to support the opposition presidential candidate and 14%, the governmental candidate. But just in the first round Mr. Yanukovych alone has a following of 18%. If you add to this Messrs.’ Tyhypko and Kinakh’s 2% and Mr. Kyrpa’s 3%, who are also taking a pro-government stand, one would have to conclude that the voter has a poor understanding of the difference between the government and the opposition.

The encouraging factor is that it is not only Western capitals that are concerned about fairness in the Ukrainian elections. Approximately 76% of Ukrainians believe that a fair presidential election campaign in 2004 is more important than the victory of one’s favorite candidate, achieved at any cost. According to Democratic Initiatives research supervisor Iryna Bekeshkina, only 10% of respondents, who are equally divided between those who support the governmental and the oppositional candidates, would like “their” candidate to win, even by nefarious means. Should the favorite candidate conduct the campaign with unfair methods, only 13% of respondents will vote for him/her, 28.5% will support none of the candidates, 21% will vote against all, and 17% will ignore the elections altogether.