Why experts should not hurry and politicians not relax
On hearing recently the forecast of a poll bureau chief that Viktor Yanukovych is able to win in the first round of the presidential elections (with his current rating being 10%), I recalled a very instructive story.
A few years ago I had an opportunity to rub shoulders with one Prof. Yadov, patriarch of Soviet and Russian sociology. I told him about the results of a survey that I thought were rather paradoxical. After hearing me, Prof. Yadov asked, “How do you interpret these data?” I spoke out my version. In reply, my eminent interlocutor formulated, without too much thinking, a few more possible interpretations of the data I had told him about.
I told this story to illustrate an important point: one must differentiate between the ratings that various sociological services regularly heap on us and the related comments (interpretations).
The problem is that in the overwhelming majority of cases sociologists gauge popularity itself without sifting the factors that influence the dynamics of these ratings. In many instances it is just impossible to unambiguously interpret the dynamics and even the level of ratings. Here are just a few examples.
How can one explain some fluctuations in the popularity of Viktor Yushchenko, the most stable in that sense? This year Mr. Yushchenko reached his peak of popularity, 26.1%, in late April. (For comparative purposes, this article presents the polling results obtained by the Razumkov Center, unless otherwise specified.) Yet, in May the level dropped to 20.1%. So what happened first in April and then in May? Nothing extraordinary seems to have happened with Our Ukraine’s leader in that period. In fact, the general public, tired of politics and politicians, took almost two weeks off in May. Still, a significant drop did occur.
We can also easily trace similar mysterious variations (both up and down) in the relatively stable ratings of Communist leader Petro Symonenko and Yuliya Tymoshenko. For example, Ms. Tymoshenko’s rating jumped to 18.4% after the holidays (according to a poll conducted by Democratic Initiatives and Taylor Nelson Sofres Ukraine). Conversely, there was no such steep increase after the September 2002 opposition actions, although Ms. Tymoshenko’s level of trust rose to 14.7% and then fell again. This can hardly be explained by means of some clear cause-and- effect patterns.
Another important circumstance. While explaining the level and dynamics of political ratings, commentators most often resort to rational explicatory models, which can well lead them into a blind alley. Hence the surprise over a seemingly paradoxical fact — “why did the trust level of the premier and the government as a whole not plummet, as it might have been expected, but, on the contrary, go up after the summertime turmoil on the market of cereals and farinaceous items?” (“Yakubovych’s ‘Sociological Success’,” Den, October 2, 2003). In reality, the paradox is only skin-deep. As it will be shown below, many respondents may display an emotional attitude to a specific politician (in this case the premier) in isolation from any rational assessment of his performance and, moreover, from that of the institution he heads. Incidentally, it is this factor that thwarts the efforts of Mr. Yushchenko’s critics. For his high rating is the result of not so much the rational vision of Our Ukraine’s leader as of the social expectations based on the Yushchenko myth.
The political consciousness of the absolute majority of voters is a chimerical and eclectic mixture of the fragments of old (Marxist) and new (mostly drawn from the media) political knowledge, ideological visions, very negligible information about Ukrainian politics and politicians, personal and group-based emotionally-colored judgments and, last, a rational, if very simplified, vision of their own interests, other people, and the country as a whole. This often leads to paradoxical consequences. Let me give a few examples.
According to the poll conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) in early March 2002, 13.2% of the Yushchenko bloc’s electorate consisted of advocates of the reunification of Ukraine and Russia, 14.8% wanted to see Russian as Ukraine’s second official language. As is known, neither Mr. Yushchenko himself nor Our Ukraine support this idea. While this paradox can be attributed to Mr. Yushchenko’s personal charisma, it is difficult to explain why, according to the same survey, 6.6% of the Communist electorate insisted that Russian be removed from any official use all over Ukraine. The survey conducted by the Ukrainian Sociology Service in December 2002 among 1,800 respondents (with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.3%) showed that 13% of those adhering to socialist ideology voted for Our Ukraine and even 1.1% of the Communist-minded voters cast votes for the Yushchenko bloc. On the other hand, 5.7% of those sharing Christian Democratic views and even 3.6% of the Liberal-minded electorate voted for the Communist Party.
One of the public opinion puzzles is the rating of premiers. The common perception is that the premier’s office is the best stepping stone for presidency. So once a politician comes to head the cabinet he immediately sees his rating growing, which automatically makes him one of the country’s most popular politicians.
As far as the stepping stone is concerned, this hardly needs any denials. Conversely, the automatic force of a premier’s rating raises certain doubt. The point is again in the differing rational and emotional judgments of our citizens.
The annual public opinion monitoring conducted by the Institute of Sociology of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences, shows quite a low level of complete and partial trust in the government in the period of 1994-2001 (the level of complete trust varied between 2% and 4%) which was slightly lower than the level of complete and partial trust in the president. On the whole, the trust in all the institutions of power remained negative. Still less trustworthy than the cabinet was Verkhovna Rada. According to Democratic Initiatives and SOCIS polls, the situation partially changed in January 2001, when the Cabinet surpassed the President for the first time in terms of public trust. This was caused, in all probability, by the so-called tapegate. The point must be different. The broad public knows about a very narrow circle of politicians. Once a politician becomes premier, he drifts into the focus of public and media attention, which at least boosts his popularity level.
The analysis shows that the assessments of the government’s and the premier’s performance do not coincide, the complete support rating of the premier exceeding that of the government (see Tables 1 and 2). This is applicable to the past three premiers. However, supporting the premier’s performance does not necessarily help increase the rating of him as presidential candidate. This is evidenced by the data of Tables 1 and 2, which show the comparative dynamics of the ratings of two premiers, Viktor Yanukovych and his predecessor Anatoly Kinakh (according to the Razumkov Center). “Presidential rating” means the share of the voters ready to vote for a specific candidate in the presidential elections.
The above data by no means show any direct relationship between the three ratings (especially in the case of Anatoly Kinakh). What is also obvious, Yanukovych is only now reaching the performance-support level that Kinakh had. Yet, the premier’s presidential rating is even now twice higher than that of his predecessor (when the latter chaired the cabinet). So the point is not only in the premier’s office.
Incidentally, the Razumkov Center’s survey data show that the summer crisis on the food market still affected the government and, partly, the premier. The slump in Viktor Yanukovych’s August ratings was, by all accounts, caused by precisely this factor. On the other hand, the government managed to rapidly overcome the crisis.
The premier’s positive presidential rating dynamics really makes it possible for us to consider him as a candidate for president. There are two reasons why, even today, Yanukovych’s and Yushchenko’s ratings are of almost the same nature. The first is that the objective characteristics of the two politicians’ performance have little impact on the dynamics of their popularity. The second and somewhat more important factor is that the presidential rating of these politicians almost coincides with the level of the complete support of their actions. This essentially shows that the two Viktors have a stable electoral base. Yet, Mr. Yushchenko has lately seen an alarming tendency: the number of his absolute supporters has declined in comparison to those who are ready to vote for him in the presidential elections. Usually, the situation is the other way round. This means that among his current supporters there is an ever-growing number of voters who take quite a critical view of the Our Ukraine leader. What holds them back in Yushchenko’s camp is perhaps the absence of an acceptable alternative.
Table 1
On hearing recently the forecast of a poll bureau chief that Viktor Yanukovych is able to win in the first round of the presidential elections (with his current rating being 10%), I recalled a very instructive story.
A few years ago I had an opportunity to rub shoulders with one Prof. Yadov, patriarch of Soviet and Russian sociology. I told him about the results of a survey that I thought were rather paradoxical. After hearing me, Prof. Yadov asked, “How do you interpret these data?” I spoke out my version. In reply, my eminent interlocutor formulated, without too much thinking, a few more possible interpretations of the data I had told him about.
I told this story to illustrate an important point: one must differentiate between the ratings that various sociological services regularly heap on us and the related comments (interpretations).
The problem is that in the overwhelming majority of cases sociologists gauge popularity itself without sifting the factors that influence the dynamics of these ratings. In many instances it is just impossible to unambiguously interpret the dynamics and even the level of ratings. Here are just a few examples.
How can one explain some fluctuations in the popularity of Viktor Yushchenko, the most stable in that sense? This year Mr. Yushchenko reached his peak of popularity, 26.1%, in late April. (For comparative purposes, this article presents the polling results obtained by the Razumkov Center, unless otherwise specified.) Yet, in May the level dropped to 20.1%. So what happened first in April and then in May? Nothing extraordinary seems to have happened with Our Ukraine’s leader in that period. In fact, the general public, tired of politics and politicians, took almost two weeks off in May. Still, a significant drop did occur.
We can also easily trace similar mysterious variations (both up and down) in the relatively stable ratings of Communist leader Petro Symonenko and Yuliya Tymoshenko. For example, Ms. Tymoshenko’s rating jumped to 18.4% after the holidays (according to a poll conducted by Democratic Initiatives and Taylor Nelson Sofres Ukraine). Conversely, there was no such steep increase after the September 2002 opposition actions, although Ms. Tymoshenko’s level of trust rose to 14.7% and then fell again. This can hardly be explained by means of some clear cause-and- effect patterns.
Another important circumstance. While explaining the level and dynamics of political ratings, commentators most often resort to rational explicatory models, which can well lead them into a blind alley. Hence the surprise over a seemingly paradoxical fact — “why did the trust level of the premier and the government as a whole not plummet, as it might have been expected, but, on the contrary, go up after the summertime turmoil on the market of cereals and farinaceous items?” (“Yakubovych’s ‘Sociological Success’,” Den, October 2, 2003). In reality, the paradox is only skin-deep. As it will be shown below, many respondents may display an emotional attitude to a specific politician (in this case the premier) in isolation from any rational assessment of his performance and, moreover, from that of the institution he heads. Incidentally, it is this factor that thwarts the efforts of Mr. Yushchenko’s critics. For his high rating is the result of not so much the rational vision of Our Ukraine’s leader as of the social expectations based on the Yushchenko myth.
The political consciousness of the absolute majority of voters is a chimerical and eclectic mixture of the fragments of old (Marxist) and new (mostly drawn from the media) political knowledge, ideological visions, very negligible information about Ukrainian politics and politicians, personal and group-based emotionally-colored judgments and, last, a rational, if very simplified, vision of their own interests, other people, and the country as a whole. This often leads to paradoxical consequences. Let me give a few examples.
According to the poll conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) in early March 2002, 13.2% of the Yushchenko bloc’s electorate consisted of advocates of the reunification of Ukraine and Russia, 14.8% wanted to see Russian as Ukraine’s second official language. As is known, neither Mr. Yushchenko himself nor Our Ukraine support this idea. While this paradox can be attributed to Mr. Yushchenko’s personal charisma, it is difficult to explain why, according to the same survey, 6.6% of the Communist electorate insisted that Russian be removed from any official use all over Ukraine. The survey conducted by the Ukrainian Sociology Service in December 2002 among 1,800 respondents (with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.3%) showed that 13% of those adhering to socialist ideology voted for Our Ukraine and even 1.1% of the Communist-minded voters cast votes for the Yushchenko bloc. On the other hand, 5.7% of those sharing Christian Democratic views and even 3.6% of the Liberal-minded electorate voted for the Communist Party.
One of the public opinion puzzles is the rating of premiers. The common perception is that the premier’s office is the best stepping stone for presidency. So once a politician comes to head the cabinet he immediately sees his rating growing, which automatically makes him one of the country’s most popular politicians.
As far as the stepping stone is concerned, this hardly needs any denials. Conversely, the automatic force of a premier’s rating raises certain doubt. The point is again in the differing rational and emotional judgments of our citizens.
The annual public opinion monitoring conducted by the Institute of Sociology of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences, shows quite a low level of complete and partial trust in the government in the period of 1994-2001 (the level of complete trust varied between 2% and 4%) which was slightly lower than the level of complete and partial trust in the president. On the whole, the trust in all the institutions of power remained negative. Still less trustworthy than the cabinet was Verkhovna Rada. According to Democratic Initiatives and SOCIS polls, the situation partially changed in January 2001, when the Cabinet surpassed the President for the first time in terms of public trust. This was caused, in all probability, by the so-called tapegate. The point must be different. The broad public knows about a very narrow circle of politicians. Once a politician becomes premier, he drifts into the focus of public and media attention, which at least boosts his popularity level.
The analysis shows that the assessments of the government’s and the premier’s performance do not coincide, the complete support rating of the premier exceeding that of the government (see Tables 1 and 2). This is applicable to the past three premiers. However, supporting the premier’s performance does not necessarily help increase the rating of him as presidential candidate. This is evidenced by the data of Tables 1 and 2, which show the comparative dynamics of the ratings of two premiers, Viktor Yanukovych and his predecessor Anatoly Kinakh (according to the Razumkov Center). “Presidential rating” means the share of the voters ready to vote for a specific candidate in the presidential elections.
The above data by no means show any direct relationship between the three ratings (especially in the case of Anatoly Kinakh). What is also obvious, Yanukovych is only now reaching the performance-support level that Kinakh had. Yet, the premier’s presidential rating is even now twice higher than that of his predecessor (when the latter chaired the cabinet). So the point is not only in the premier’s office.
Incidentally, the Razumkov Center’s survey data show that the summer crisis on the food market still affected the government and, partly, the premier. The slump in Viktor Yanukovych’s August ratings was, by all accounts, caused by precisely this factor. On the other hand, the government managed to rapidly overcome the crisis.
The premier’s positive presidential rating dynamics really makes it possible for us to consider him as a candidate for president. There are two reasons why, even today, Yanukovych’s and Yushchenko’s ratings are of almost the same nature. The first is that the objective characteristics of the two politicians’ performance have little impact on the dynamics of their popularity. The second and somewhat more important factor is that the presidential rating of these politicians almost coincides with the level of the complete support of their actions. This essentially shows that the two Viktors have a stable electoral base. Yet, Mr. Yushchenko has lately seen an alarming tendency: the number of his absolute supporters has declined in comparison to those who are ready to vote for him in the presidential elections. Usually, the situation is the other way round. This means that among his current supporters there is an ever-growing number of voters who take quite a critical view of the Our Ukraine leader. What holds them back in Yushchenko’s camp is perhaps the absence of an acceptable alternative.
Table 1
Table 2
On hearing recently the forecast of a poll bureau chief that Viktor Yanukovych is able to win in the first round of the presidential elections (with his current rating being 10%), I recalled a very instructive story.
A few years ago I had an opportunity to rub shoulders with one Prof. Yadov, patriarch of Soviet and Russian sociology. I told him about the results of a survey that I thought were rather paradoxical. After hearing me, Prof. Yadov asked, “How do you interpret these data?” I spoke out my version. In reply, my eminent interlocutor formulated, without too much thinking, a few more possible interpretations of the data I had told him about.
I told this story to illustrate an important point: one must differentiate between the ratings that various sociological services regularly heap on us and the related comments (interpretations).
The problem is that in the overwhelming majority of cases sociologists gauge popularity itself without sifting the factors that influence the dynamics of these ratings. In many instances it is just impossible to unambiguously interpret the dynamics and even the level of ratings. Here are just a few examples.
How can one explain some fluctuations in the popularity of Viktor Yushchenko, the most stable in that sense? This year Mr. Yushchenko reached his peak of popularity, 26.1%, in late April. (For comparative purposes, this article presents the polling results obtained by the Razumkov Center, unless otherwise specified.) Yet, in May the level dropped to 20.1%. So what happened first in April and then in May? Nothing extraordinary seems to have happened with Our Ukraine’s leader in that period. In fact, the general public, tired of politics and politicians, took almost two weeks off in May. Still, a significant drop did occur.
We can also easily trace similar mysterious variations (both up and down) in the relatively stable ratings of Communist leader Petro Symonenko and Yuliya Tymoshenko. For example, Ms. Tymoshenko’s rating jumped to 18.4% after the holidays (according to a poll conducted by Democratic Initiatives and Taylor Nelson Sofres Ukraine). Conversely, there was no such steep increase after the September 2002 opposition actions, although Ms. Tymoshenko’s level of trust rose to 14.7% and then fell again. This can hardly be explained by means of some clear cause-and- effect patterns.
Another important circumstance. While explaining the level and dynamics of political ratings, commentators most often resort to rational explicatory models, which can well lead them into a blind alley. Hence the surprise over a seemingly paradoxical fact — “why did the trust level of the premier and the government as a whole not plummet, as it might have been expected, but, on the contrary, go up after the summertime turmoil on the market of cereals and farinaceous items?” (“Yakubovych’s ‘Sociological Success’,” Den, October 2, 2003). In reality, the paradox is only skin-deep. As it will be shown below, many respondents may display an emotional attitude to a specific politician (in this case the premier) in isolation from any rational assessment of his performance and, moreover, from that of the institution he heads. Incidentally, it is this factor that thwarts the efforts of Mr. Yushchenko’s critics. For his high rating is the result of not so much the rational vision of Our Ukraine’s leader as of the social expectations based on the Yushchenko myth.
The political consciousness of the absolute majority of voters is a chimerical and eclectic mixture of the fragments of old (Marxist) and new (mostly drawn from the media) political knowledge, ideological visions, very negligible information about Ukrainian politics and politicians, personal and group-based emotionally-colored judgments and, last, a rational, if very simplified, vision of their own interests, other people, and the country as a whole. This often leads to paradoxical consequences. Let me give a few examples.
According to the poll conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) in early March 2002, 13.2% of the Yushchenko bloc’s electorate consisted of advocates of the reunification of Ukraine and Russia, 14.8% wanted to see Russian as Ukraine’s second official language. As is known, neither Mr. Yushchenko himself nor Our Ukraine support this idea. While this paradox can be attributed to Mr. Yushchenko’s personal charisma, it is difficult to explain why, according to the same survey, 6.6% of the Communist electorate insisted that Russian be removed from any official use all over Ukraine. The survey conducted by the Ukrainian Sociology Service in December 2002 among 1,800 respondents (with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.3%) showed that 13% of those adhering to socialist ideology voted for Our Ukraine and even 1.1% of the Communist-minded voters cast votes for the Yushchenko bloc. On the other hand, 5.7% of those sharing Christian Democratic views and even 3.6% of the Liberal-minded electorate voted for the Communist Party.
One of the public opinion puzzles is the rating of premiers. The common perception is that the premier’s office is the best stepping stone for presidency. So once a politician comes to head the cabinet he immediately sees his rating growing, which automatically makes him one of the country’s most popular politicians.
As far as the stepping stone is concerned, this hardly needs any denials. Conversely, the automatic force of a premier’s rating raises certain doubt. The point is again in the differing rational and emotional judgments of our citizens.
The annual public opinion monitoring conducted by the Institute of Sociology of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences, shows quite a low level of complete and partial trust in the government in the period of 1994-2001 (the level of complete trust varied between 2% and 4%) which was slightly lower than the level of complete and partial trust in the president. On the whole, the trust in all the institutions of power remained negative. Still less trustworthy than the cabinet was Verkhovna Rada. According to Democratic Initiatives and SOCIS polls, the situation partially changed in January 2001, when the Cabinet surpassed the President for the first time in terms of public trust. This was caused, in all probability, by the so-called tapegate. The point must be different. The broad public knows about a very narrow circle of politicians. Once a politician becomes premier, he drifts into the focus of public and media attention, which at least boosts his popularity level.
The analysis shows that the assessments of the government’s and the premier’s performance do not coincide, the complete support rating of the premier exceeding that of the government (see Tables 1 and 2). This is applicable to the past three premiers. However, supporting the premier’s performance does not necessarily help increase the rating of him as presidential candidate. This is evidenced by the data of Tables 1 and 2, which show the comparative dynamics of the ratings of two premiers, Viktor Yanukovych and his predecessor Anatoly Kinakh (according to the Razumkov Center). “Presidential rating” means the share of the voters ready to vote for a specific candidate in the presidential elections.
The above data by no means show any direct relationship between the three ratings (especially in the case of Anatoly Kinakh). What is also obvious, Yanukovych is only now reaching the performance-support level that Kinakh had. Yet, the premier’s presidential rating is even now twice higher than that of his predecessor (when the latter chaired the cabinet). So the point is not only in the premier’s office.
Incidentally, the Razumkov Center’s survey data show that the summer crisis on the food market still affected the government and, partly, the premier. The slump in Viktor Yanukovych’s August ratings was, by all accounts, caused by precisely this factor. On the other hand, the government managed to rapidly overcome the crisis.
The premier’s positive presidential rating dynamics really makes it possible for us to consider him as a candidate for president. There are two reasons why, even today, Yanukovych’s and Yushchenko’s ratings are of almost the same nature. The first is that the objective characteristics of the two politicians’ performance have little impact on the dynamics of their popularity. The second and somewhat more important factor is that the presidential rating of these politicians almost coincides with the level of the complete support of their actions. This essentially shows that the two Viktors have a stable electoral base. Yet, Mr. Yushchenko has lately seen an alarming tendency: the number of his absolute supporters has declined in comparison to those who are ready to vote for him in the presidential elections. Usually, the situation is the other way round. This means that among his current supporters there is an ever-growing number of voters who take quite a critical view of the Our Ukraine leader. What holds them back in Yushchenko’s camp is perhaps the absence of an acceptable alternative.
Table 1
Table 2
Can we say today that Mr. Yanukovych stands a fair chance of winning? I think it is too early to do so. It is not even guaranteed that he will contest the runoff. It would be wrong to think that Symonenko will remain stuck with his 11-13%. While in October 1998 the Communist leader’s presidential rating was a mere 4.3%, it jumped to 14.8% a year later, in October 1999 (according to SOCIS), and, as a result, Symonenko gathered 22.24% of votes in the first round of the 1999 presidential elections. The experience of the 1999 presidential elections as well as the parliamentary elections of 2002 shows that the Communists usually build up their electoral potential during the election campaign. Now too the Communist leader seems set to garner about 20% of votes in the coming presidential elections. And if the Communists and the Socialists choose to contest the election on a joint ticket, they will get at least a fourth of the vote. In any case, the Communist leader is a major obstacle for Yanukovych, one of the factors being the overlapping of their electoral bases. For both candidates primarily rely on the votes of eastern and southern Ukrainians. Therefore, the residents of these regions will end up divided in their electoral preferences.
In general, a representative of Centrist parties will only be able to contest the election runoff if he is their single, joint, candidate. But even in this case, losses are inevitable. For instance, a KIIS June survey suggests that, if Lytvyn, Medvedchuk, and Tihipko stay out of the presidential race, a third of their potential supporters will cast their votes for opposition candidates (Yushchenko, Symonenko, Moroz, and Tymoshenko).
The runoff is not a simple matter either. What can be an indicator in this case is the share of the voters who will not vote for a specific candidate under any circumstauces. This index makes up 32.3% in the case of Yushchenko and 37.0% in that of Yanukovych (according to a Razumkov Center poll in August 2003). It is noteworthy that the second round will furnish Yushchenko a large number of opposition votes, including some of those supporting Symonenko. A KIIS March poll showed that if Yushchenko and Yanukovych were to contest the runoff, the former would have obtained 39.3% and the latter a mere 10.5% of the votes. As of today, Yanukovych has increased his rating and would have surely won more votes in the runoff, although the overall lineup of forces has undergone no radical changes.
In any case, it is too early to make any conclusions about the candidates’ chances in the elections to be held in a year’s time. Let us recall again the situation before the 1999 presidential elections. It is Natalia Vitrenko who led in the presidential ratings’ race from December 1998 till May 1999: only in June did Leonid Kuchma overtake her by a narrow margin. The president achieved a decisive edge in this struggle just on the eve of the elections, in September-October 1999 (according to SOCIS and Social Monitoring polls). Although Vitrenko ran ahead of Symonenko in the polls until the elections in October 1999, she came off only the fourth best. The course of the election campaign, especially at the home stretch, can make a lot of changes in the lineup of the main presidential contenders.
Sociological ratings are a mysterious and sinister phenomenon. The short-tempered horse of political preferences can buck at any moment and throw the favorite out of the saddle. This is why experts should not hurry with forecasts, and the potential presidential candidates ought not to relax.
