Alongside the local elections held on Oct. 25, President Volodymyr Zelensky conducted a public opinion poll on issues ranging from medical cannabis to the memorandum under which Ukraine renounced its nuclear weapons in 1994.
“Come and decide,” Zelensky said in a video when introducing the poll, implying that the results would be used as a mandate for potential policy shifts. Officially, however, the results of the poll have no legal force.
On election day, activists and journalists reported that the hastily prepared poll saw people voting multiple times and many polling stations lacked volunteers to distribute the questionnaire.
Furthermore, at multiple polling stations, volunteers told the Kyiv Post that they had signed a document banning them from publically sharing information about the poll, including the name of the sociological company that hired them to conduct the survey.
They also declined to say who will oversee the counting process.
Oleksiy Haran, research director of the Democratic Initiatives sociological institute, says that Zelensky’s poll lacks even the little credibility it was supposed to have before election day.
“An opinion poll must be representative. This poll isn’t,” Haran told the Kyiv Post. “It’s a clear manipulation.”
Zelensky’s ‘referendum’
In an Oct. 15 video address to the nation, Zelensky unveiled five questions that would eventually appear on a presidential poll conducted outside polling stations during the official local elections.
While the president’s supporters promoted the poll as “true democracy” and an act of direct communication between the Ukrainian president and the Ukrainian people, political observers and those conducting trustworthy opinion polling argued that these polls do not provide a true picture of public opinion. Rather, they serve as an additional way to attract Zelensky’s supporters to the polling stations.
Read More: Zelensky unveils 5 questions for his Oct. 25 poll
The questions that ultimately appeared on the paper opinion poll were the following:
- Do you support the idea of life imprisonment for large-scale corruption?
- Do you support the establishment of a free economic zone on the territory of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts?
- Do you support reducing the number of lawmakers in parliament (from 450) to 300?
- Do you support the legalization of cannabis for medical use — for pain relief in severely ill patients?
- Do you support Ukraine’s right to use the security guarantees established by the Budapest Memorandum for restoring its state sovereignty and territorial integrity?
According to exit polls by the Rating Group, which were conducted among people who voted in the local elections, over 70% supported the idea of life imprisonment for corrupt officials, reducing the number of lawmakers, the legalization of cannabis for medical use and using the Budapest Memorandum’s security guarantees.
Only 45% of voters supported a free economic zone on the territory of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.
But while most of the proposals in the poll appear to enjoy solid support, the survey was poorly conducted and not available at every polling station.
Anya Tsukanova, a journalist for Agence France-Presse, wrote on Facebook that the polling station where she voted had a woman conducting the poll outside, yet she couldn’t do her job because she lacked equipment.
“I asked (her) why are you alone. They said that there would be two people (at each station conducting the poll) in Kyiv. Yes, she said, yesterday we spent three hours on the street waiting until (the organizers) would decide who was going to which polling station. A lot of people just went home,” wrote Tsukanova.
Tsukanova implied that many volunteers decided to not take part in the poll, because of poor planning.
Multiple Kyiv Post journalists who voted at their polling stations said that they couldn’t spot people conducting the so-called “referendum.”
The Committee of Voters of Ukraine, a non-governmental organization monitoring the elections, wrote that some volunteers conducting the poll were agitating for one or more answer.
“There are cases when interviewers persuade voters of the need to reduce the number of lawmakers, the importance of the Budapest Memorandum and so on. Some voters do not accept such explanatory work, which in some cases leads to conflicts,” reads the official statement of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine.
Questioned legality
While the poll isn’t officially binding, which means it is not required to adhere to standards set forth in election law, there are questions about whether it was legal to hold.
- Who paid for the poll?
Volunteers questioned by the Kyiv Post all said they were working for free, yet declined to name the company that hired them and who provided the equipment for the poll.
The equipment in question is millions of pieces of papers that have the five questions phrased as being directly from the president, cardboard boxes without insignia in which the papers are placed and vests that identify the volunteers as people conducting the poll.
That costs money, but it is unclear whose.
On Oct. 22, Olga Aivazovska, head of election watchdog OPORA, said that, if each polling station will have two interviewers, the poll will cost at least Hr 75 million ($2.2 million).
Haran says that an exit poll with proper representativeness costs at least 150,000 euros.
- Can the fact that Zelensky was actively urging people to participate be ruled as illegal agitation for his Servant of the People party?
Soon after the poll was first mentioned by the president, Aivazovska said that “polling doesn’t contradict the Election Code as long as it is conducted outside of the voting premises.”
“However, the law prohibits any campaigning on election day. That’s why the poll’s questions should not contain open or covert campaigning that could influence the results of the vote,” Aivazovska added.
Asked whether the presence of Zelensky’s name on the survey document can be considered covert agitation, Aivazovska said OPORA doesn’t see any violations.
According to Haran, the public opinion survey was conducted specifically to draw Zelensky’s supporters to the polls.
“It’s an interview of those people who are willing to participate,” says Haran.
“The majority of people who want to take part in the poll are Zelensky’s supporters, thus mobilizing his electorate to the polling stations,” says Haran, adding that opposition parties and their supporters are against the poll and, in most instances, decline to take part in it.
- Will it be used as a mandate to shape the government’s policies?
The biggest question of all will be answered only after the results are counted.
However, Zelensky referred to the survey as a “presidential exit poll” during his most recent interview with Ukrainian television channels. He has also stated on multiple occasions that he wants to give the Ukrainian people power “through referendums and other forms of direct democracy.”
