Six exit polls might turn out to be crucial in deciding the outcome of the runoff vote on Feb. 7.
The runoff in this year’s Ukrainian presidential race is beginning to look a lot like the legally nihilistic dog fight of the 2004 election, which was only resolved following the Orange Revolution and top-level international arbitration.
Then, as now, exit surveys may be one of the few instruments available to judge the integrity of a hotly contested vote – if you trust the people who are organizing them.
“If conducted legitimately and accurately, they’re a check on democracy,” said Larry Rosin, president of U.S.-based Edison Research, which has been conducting exit polls for the National Exit Pool, a consortium of ABC News, Associated Press, CBS News, CNN, Fox News and NBC News since 2003. “They help verify the accuracy of the vote count,” he added.
Around the world, exit polls have been used to verify the integrity of elections and flag possible attempts of fraud.
During the 2004 election, which pitted current Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko against today’s frontrunner Victor Yanukovych, a single Western-funded poll, the Democratic Initiatives’ National Exit Poll, challenged the fraudulent victory of Yanukovych, ultimately forcing him to step down in favor of Yushchenko.
This year, Yanukovych is competing against Yushchenko’s fellow Orange revolutionary, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, and National Exit Poll will be among five other pollsters.
Since 2004, Ukrainian election officials have pulled off a string of uncontested elections, including the first round of the current presidential race. However, the success of the second round is already looking bleak, following last minute changes to the election law pushed through parliament by Yanukovych’s Regions faction.
Tymoshenko immediately condemned the changes as an attempt by the Yanukovych team to steal the runoff and threatened to again mobilize public protests in case of such an outcome.
In the second round on Feb. 7, all exit polls are expected to be challenged, as the battle is fierce and any votes attributed to one candidate is a vote taken away from the other. “This means any mistake made is essentially a double mistake,” said Volodymyr Paniotto, general director of the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, one of the two organizations carrying out field work for the National Exit Poll.
The National Exit Poll was heavily skewed against Yanukovych in the first round, but it remains the only poll backed by international donors.
Four other polls out of six are being financed by television stations owned by billionaires with deep pockets. ICTV channel is tied to billionaire Victor Pinchuk, son-in-law to ex-president Leonid Kuchma who campaigned on behalf of Yanukovych. Igor Kolomoisky controls channel 1+1. Ukraine’s richest man and a major backer of Yanukovcyh owns TRK Ukraina. Inter channel is controlled by Valery Khoroshkovsky, an influential businessman and deputy head of the State Security Service. All are seen as not being in favor of a Tymoshenko presidency.
The remaining exit poll will be carried out by Yevhen Kopatko’s Research & Branding group, which is also widely considered to be aligned with Yanukovych’s Party of Regions.
The results of all six polls will be announced immediately after polling stations close at 8 p.m. on Feb. 7. Also, Opora, a Western-funded NGO, will carry out a statistical quick vote count at 1,003 randomly selected polling stations based on a representative pre-determined sample size on Feb. 7 and also will make their results known at 8 p.m.
In the first round on Jan. 17, four out of the six exit polls ended up having figures outside their margin of errors for some of the top five candidates, which led to heavy politicizing by both the Yanukovych and Tymoshenko camps.
National Exit Poll was initially considered to be the most independent of all. But its results in the first round of election were also skewed, casting doubts about its integrity and methodology.
Some experts said that despite errors in the first round, they still trust the National Exit Poll the most. “Personally, in my line of work I rely on the findings of work done by Razumkov Center and Kyiv International Institute of Sociology [organizations that actually carry out the National Exit Poll],” said Yaroslav Poharskiy, director of the Kyiv Institute of Strategic Development think tank. “…I also have a certain degree of trust toward GFK [conducting the exit poll for ICTV],” he added.
Ilko Kucheriv, the director of Democratic Initiatives, which commissions the National Exit Poll, said the results of exit polls will also be subject to political spin. He defended his poll’s results by arguing that, unlike the other polls, National Exit Poll was completely independent of information generated by the Central Electoral Commission.
“We will always be a target, because of our mandate to provide independent public oversight,” he said.
Olha Aivazovska, head of Opora, said the real litmus test for any polling organization is full transparency, in addition to methodology and impartiality.
“It’s difficult to say which poll to trust – not all of them are transparent enough. How do we know for certain, even if there are parallel observers doing spot checks in some areas where fieldwork is being done throughout the country?”
Kyiv Post staff writer Mark Rachkevych can be reached at [email protected].
