As many as four exit polls and at least three parallel vote counts will be conducted on election day
As many as four exit polls will be conducted on Sept. 30. Their results will be announced on television shortly after polls close on Sunday. If official returns differ significantly from the exit polls, political forces on the losing side may see cause to cry foul and claim electoral fraud in the courts.
And at least three political parties plan to conduct parallel vote counts to compare returns reported locally with centralized election results.
Exit polls and parallel vote counts played roles in detecting electoral fraud during the 2004 presidential race, when 2.8 million ballots were deemed falsified in the second round of voting by the Committee of Voters, Ukraine’s largest election watchdog.
National Exit Poll
The “National Exit Poll 2007” is being organized by the Democratic Initiatives Foundation (DIF) with fieldwork from the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) and the Razumkov Ukrainian Center for Economic and Political Studies.
The consortium plans to survey 20,000 respondents at 300 polling stations nationwide. The results of the national poll will be made public soon after polls officially close at 10 p.m. on Sunday.
Volodymyr Paniotto, KIIS director, said the polling consortium will use the same methodology used in the 2006 and 2004 elections: the so-called secret ballot survey technique.
DIF director Ilko Kucheriv, now on his ninth election exit poll, said that the consortium exit poll process is being fully audited by Russian and American sociological experts.
The project is being sponsored by a forum of international donors, including the embassies of the USA, Norway, the Netherlands, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, the International Renaissance Foundation, the National Endowment for Democracy and others.
He said that the $130,000 exit poll will be one of the most transparent components of the election because of high scrutiny and strict reporting requirements.
In the March 2006 elections, the consortium exit poll results differed slightly from final returns by a total of 1.3 percent for all 45 parties and blocs.
TV channel poll
The exit poll was not invented by sociologists or scientists, but by US television networks in the 1960s. On Sept. 25, Ukraine’s ICTV television channel announced plans to conduct a poll of 40,000 respondents at 720 polling stations. Three separate surveys will be conducted by TNS Sofres and the American PSB and Public Strategies companies.
TNS Sofres director Mykola Churylov conducted exit polls with DIF in the past but left the national consortium over allegations that he skewed 2004 exit poll results in favor of then-presidential candidate Viktor Yanokuvych.
Churylov’s TNS is expected to poll 25,000 respondents, PSB 10,000, and Public Strategies 5,000 on election day.
New kids on the block
A week prior to voting, the “Sociovymir 2007” exit poll was announced by Serhiy Taran of the International Institute of Democracies. Organizers said that the poll will be conducted by the Sociovymir Center for Sociological and Political Research. The Fourth Wave NGO of recent emigrants “ordered the poll” according to organizers.
Oleksandr Tykhonov, academic director of the Sociovymir project, said that 10,000 respondents in all regions will be polled.
Regions exit poll unsure
Yevhen Kopatko, Research & Branding Group Director, known for close ties with the Party of Regions, is still uncertain over the future of the exit poll planned by his company. Kopatko said that preparations are proceeding, but the issue of financing is not yet resolved.
“I am willing to conduct an exit poll, but there is still no budget,” he said.
Trust experience
Given DIF’s experience, results of the National Exit Poll consortium are likely to be considered trustworthy by many experts. Oleksandr Chernenko, press secretary for the Committee of Voters (CVU) said that the DIF-led consortium conducted polls in the past and has proved quite reliable. Chernenko said that Sociovymir has no experience in conducting exit polls and, therefore, the quality of their network is uncertain.
Parallel vote counts
Another control mechanism over the vote tally in the past has been conducting parallel vote counts and comparing official returns at the local level with those reported at the district and central commission levels.
The CVU has conducted parallel vote counts in the past but will not be doing so for these elections, “because we lack resources,” said Chernenko.
Maria Gorr, spokesperson for the Party of Regions said, “We plan to use our own vote count that will only be used for internal purposes.” “I believe every other party will also be using their own system of alternative vote count. It is a regular practice of the election process,” said Gorr.
“Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defense” and Yulia Tymoshenko’s opposition bloc (Byut) are also going to conduct parallel vote counts, confirmed press secretaries of both blocs.
At a Sept. 26 press conference, Byut leader Oleksandr Turchynov said that the bloc will conduct a three-tiered parallel count. Results will be called in by telephone to a call center, sent by email and by regular post. He said preliminary results of Byut’s parallel vote count should be known by midnight after voting.
