Market research firm look to local NGO coalition to produce concrete results after flip-flop in recent polls
Followers of the Ukrainian presidential campaign have probably been monitoring the results of numerous pre-election polls. Some have consistently shown Our Ukraine opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko with a lead of about seven percentage points to 10 percentage points over Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, while others have shown the candidates in a dead heat.
In the last two weeks, however, new polls seem to indicate a surge in support for Yanukovych; his rating in some polls has suddenly surpassed that of Yushchenko, while others show the oppositionist in the lead.
The Central Election Commission has enforced a provision in the election law that does not allow opinion results to be published within 15 days of the election. The ban, which took effect Oct. 16, has only temporarily lifted the uncertainty generated by these polls.
The conflicting information from the polls has already raised concerns about the accuracy of exit polls, which will be conducted Oct. 31 at polling stations nationwide.
Exit polls can be key indicators of whether or not the voting process was free and fair.
However, questions have surfaced about the objectivity of the exit-pollsters and have led some to ask whether the exit polls will add to the confusion surrounding Ukraine’s presidential elections. Will the polls cloud the issues even more, making it difficult to determine the fairness of the vote count?
Pre-election polls
Oleksandr Fedoryshyn, director of market research firm GfK-USM, said “many of the pre-election political polls in Ukraine are nothing more than tools used in PR campaigns.” GfK-USM is a member of the GfK group, one of the world’s leading market research firms, with more than 140 affiliates worldwide in 51 countries.
Unlike many sociological firms that actively participate in political polls, GfK-USM made the decision in September to protect its well-respected brand name by sitting out on further political research, including exit polls.
The company’s absence – and the lack of open participation by other internationally renowned pollsters such as Gallup, Dogby and Whitman Strategies – leaves Ukrainian and Russian firms to conduct the exit polling on Oct. 31.
The problem of exit-polling in Ukraine, says Fedoryshyn, lies in the fact that most polls here, regardless of which firm conducted the research, have been requested and designed by clients associated with particular candidates. In many cases, sociological or market research firms conduct the polls using questions prepared by the client himself and formulated in a way likely to produce certain desired results, Fedoryshyn said.
The way in which these questions are worded and the order in which they’re asked can have a large effect on poll results. In fact, there are many ways poll results can be manipulated to favor a particular candidate, says Fedoryshyn.
“If you want to get an objective result, you need to ask as your first question: who will you vote for, and then follow up with other questions,” Fedoryshyn said. “But if you ask those being surveyed first whether they are happy that pensions were raised and worried that Yushchenko is not healthy enough to serve as president, and then ask who they will vote for – Yanukovych or Yushchenko – then you will likely see that support for Yanukovych among those surveyed is higher.
“If you pose 15 questions of this kind before asking who they will vote for, then the gap between the candidates becomes bigger and bigger,” Fedoryshyn added.
Fedoryshyn says it’s common in Ukrainian political polling for the party who ordered the survey to put together the questions. Truly objective political polls designed and presented in a way to obtain results that reflect reality, are not common.
Honest results
Another point of concern is that the results are not representative of individuals’ persuasions and opinions. Many people surveyed do not admit to supporting oppositionist candidates for fear of the consequences that could result from such a disclosure.
“We don’t know exactly what percentage of people surveyed respond in this way. We do know from previous parliamentary elections that most sociological companies showed that before the vote support for certain oppositionist political parties – such as the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc and the Socialist Party – was around four percent,” Fedoryshyn said. “But after the vote count, their support ended up nearly twice as high.”
Because of the controversy about polling, GfK-USM decided that it would no longer be involved in the process. Involvement in this dirty election campaign would risk damaging the company’s well-respected brand name, Fedoryshyn said. “There have been big offers, but we have made a conscious decision not to accept them,” he added.
Fedoryshyn said GfK-USM turned down an offer to do an exit poll proposed by Russia’s Obshestvenoye Mnenie Fund, a fund believed to be closely affiliated with Kremlin advisor and political spin-doctor Gleb Pavlovsky.
Deputy Head of Ukraine’s State Statistics Committee Natalia Vlasenko said a subsidiary of her committee Derzhinform-Consulting has also received an offer from Obshestvenoye Mnenie to conduct an exit poll, but they also turned it down.
“We will not do it, we do not get involved in politics,” she said.
Obshestvenoye Mnenie did not respond to inquiries for information by the Post.
Exit polls
Insiders say that four to five exit polls will be performed during the first and second rounds of the presidential election, and they may indicate victories for different candidates. Some may be considered more legitimate than others.
Such a discrepancy could pose a serious problem for those trying to determine whether the voting was democratic or not. David Nicholas, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s Ambassador to Ukraine, said exit polls “can be” a major indicator of whether or not the voting process was fair. Nicholas said the OSCE was aware of several exit poll projects underway though he declined to say which could be trusted.
One exit poll which GfK-USM officials expect to be objective, with a proper methodological approach, is the one being coordinated by the Democratic Initiatives Foundation, a Kyiv-based NGO which has performed four exit polls following previous Ukrainian elections. The DIF exit poll is being financially sponsored by the embassies of eight countries: Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Great Britain, the United States and Canada. Four Foundations – the National Endowment for Democracy, Eurasia Foundation, Mott Foundation and Renaissance Foundation – are also funding the poll.
Ilko Kucheriv, Director of DIF, said the coalition also asked the Russian Embassy to take part, but so far DIF is “still waiting for a response.” Kucheriv added that the initial funds for the project were raised this summer and that more than $100,000 will be spent on the project, which also included pre-election polling.
“We want the funds in order to pay for an internal audit of our exit polls, which will be performed by groups such as the Sociological Association of Ukraine, WAPOR and ESOMAR,” Kucheriv added.
Big consortium
DIF has established a consortium of four Ukrainian polling firms to conduct the exit polls. They include Socis, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, Social Monitoring and the Razumkov Ukrainian Center for Economic and Political Research. Each firm will first ask 12,500 respondents nationwide at or near the entrance to the polling stations who they voted for. Kucheriv added that other questions used to analyze the vote results will follow. The results will be compiled and analyzed separately.
“We are doing four parallel nationwide exit polls and they will each serve as controls for one another,” Kucheriv said, noting that the difficulties of entering prisons, hospitals and army bases will prevent exit polling at these sites. Exit polls will also not be conducted at polling stations based outside of Ukraine. Results of the DIF exit poll will be available on Oct. 31 after voting comes to a halt at 8:00 p.m. through media outlets and www.exitpoll.org.ua.
GfK-USM’s Fedoryshyn backs the DIF poll, saying it “looks to be using the soundest methodological approach which does not favor any particular candidate.”
“If the company works with a good survey package that uses an objective methodological approach, they will gather a result which reflects the true way people voted,” Fedoryshyn said.
Kucheriv worries that other exit polls could employ slanted methodological approaches to favor one candidate. This could complicate efforts to determine whether the voting process was fair.
“I heard that four to five exit polls could be done in addition to ours and that one of them, Obshestvenoye Mnenie, is offering a lot of money [to firms who will conduct a poll for them],” said Kucheriv.
According to GfK-USM, typical polls surveying 2,000 people cost between $10,000 and $15,000.
“You could call October 31 the day of exit polls, instead of election day,” Kucheriv added.
Mykhailo Pohrebinsky, director of the Kyiv Center for Political Research and Conflictology, doubts the exit polls conducted by Obshestvenoye Mnenie will differ significantly from those conducted by the DIF consortium.
Pohrebinsky, a consultant to the Presidential Administration, and a close friend of Pavlovsky and Obshestvenoye Mnenie, said the latter will perform an exit poll of 50,000 respondents. Pohrebinsky said Obshestvenoye Mnenie, one of Russia’s top two polling firms, has contracted about 10 regional polling firms for their project. Pohrebinsky could not say what the first question in their poll would be; neither could he say where they received the money to conduct the poll, which will cost approximately $250,000. Yet he stressed it would be honest and show results similar to those of DIF’s consortium.
Claims that the exit polls will be falsified are purely in the interest of the opposition, Pohrebinsky said, which is interested in having the elections called off because of widespread violations.
“The Yanukovych camp is more interested than anyone that the exit polls are conducted objectively and fairly, as he is leading in the polls,” Pohrebinsky said.
