Monthly Archive: October 2001

A decrease in number of supporters of integration spotted in two previous surveys continues in October, though a little slower than in August (see Table 1). As a result, over the last two years the number of opponents of integration has exceeded the number of supporters. It mainly resulted from the fact that the number of respondents who consider unification into a single state the best variant of bilateral relations dropped (see Table 2). But we should mention here that the number of those who consider good friendly relations of two independent states an optimal variant did not go up, whereas the ranks of advocates of a union of sovereign states crept up 5%.

Back in August, as we know from IISEPS data, almost two thirds of respondents said they have no enough information about each candidate for presidency (see Table 1). More than 40% of them were going to vote for A. Luakshenko (see Table 2). However, among all supporters of A. Lukashenko the ratio of those well-informed was two times higher than among all voters. That means that to some degree the parliamentary election scenario recurred, when a considerable part of the population voted having no proper information, but in line with their political-ideological preferences. What could be said about information availability at the presidential election, and how information knowledge is related to personal choice of voters?

It is no secret that representatives of different social-demographic groups of the population have differing political (and not only political) opinions. It is quite evident from the results of the October national opinion poll by IISEPS, presented in the context of major social-demographic and regional characteristics. For example, this data* shows (See Tables 1-6), that women turned most active in the voting process (87.3%), pensioners (90.7%) and representatives of senior age groups (aged 40–49 – 86.2%, aged 50–59 – 89.7%, 60 and up – 91.0%). Residents of Grodno (87.6%) and Gomel (88.6%) regions as well as rural population were the most active.

Another IISEPS’s national public opinion poll was conducted four weeks after the voting, results of which, announced by the Central Election Commission, caused a very conflicting reaction by different population groups. With complete approval of their supporters Belarus’ authorities announced an “elegant victory”, the opposition leaders claimed there was an unprecedented falsification of results, influential foreign organizations and leadership of most of western countries said the election did not correspond to international standards. But who is right? Let’s consider the October opinion poll’s results from this standpoint. In some cases we would use results of previous sociological procedures conducted by IISEPS.

Accumulation of positive estimations regarding different social-economic factors has been a distinguishing feature of dynamics of population’s economic visions in the current year. To put it other way, there is a certain growth of public satisfaction with economic situation. It is proved practically by all traditional indicators which IISEPS applies to monitor economic perceptions of our fellow citizens (see Tables 1–5). Although most of the indicators still gravitate towards negative estimation, a positive dynamics is evident.