(1594 persons interviewed, margin of error does not exceed 0.03) 1. In your opinion, how do people live in Belarus? Variant of answer Better than in Belarus Like in Belarus Worse than in Belarus DA/NA Poland 50.8 26.0 11.4 11.8 Latvia 39.7 26.3 18.0 16.0 Lithuania 36.8 27.3 20.0 15.9 Russia 24.6 40.7 28.1 …
Monthly Archive: April 2006
BULLETINS INFOFOCUS № 4
E-bulletin of IISEPS Center for Documentation, N 4, 2006 (only Russian) Content: Introduction Theme of the month: Chernobyl March: Ceremony or Ground? Person of the month: Old New Prime Minister: Loyalty or Professionalism? Document of the month: Strategic Plan: Does Opposition Have a Plan? Organization of the month: Vyasna Is Ten: Rights Protection Centers Are …
INNOCENCE VS. BELTRANSGAZ
In the Belarusian mentality, Russia is not only its closest ally but perhaps the only ally: the majority of Belarusians estimate low the friendliness of other countries towards Belarus. In addition, most of the so-called friends are situated far from Belarus (like China and Kazakhstan) and don’t raise great sympathy, unlike Russia.
FOES ARE STILL ALL AROUND?
In October of 2005 (article “Foes All Around?”) we offered to you analysis of the results of September’05 opinion poll presenting foreign political estimates and priorities of Belarusians. We asked these questions again in the April of 2006. You may see what have changed in Table 1 below.
WHERE DOES EUROPE END?
Answers of respondents to the questions on self-identification divided almost equally between “Europeans” and “Soviet men” (See Table 1).
Table 1. Dynamics of answers to the question “Do you think you are rather a European or a Soviet man?”, %
THE MAJORITY LOVES RUSSIA AND NOT USSR!
As it goes from Table 1, when it comes to choice of the development path for the country, approximately one third of respondents (32.6%) prefer accession of Belarus into the European Union and slightly more than a half of respondents (53.9%) would choose integration with Russia. For the past two years, supporters of Europe-oriented integration decreased very insignificantly (less than by 4 points). However, supporters of East-oriented integration have grown up from 41% to 53.9%, i.e. by a third. This happened due to a considerable decrease in the number of vacillating (from 22.5% to 13.5%).
ENDURING ECHO OF CHERNOBYL
Quite recently Belarus commemorated twentieth anniversary of the catastrophe at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. They have been speaking much, on the top level including, about the measures taken for the most efficient post-disaster cleanup. It was said there are no grounds for concern, “emotions should be left in the past”, etc. In other words, the authorities do their best to diminish importance of the Chernobyl problem.
IS EVERYTHING THAT FINE WITH US?
The polling data show that the generally positive perception of dynamics of personal welfare among Belarusians is getting stronger (See Table 1). In particular, the number of those who think that their welfare improved over the past three months has increased almost four-fold over the past three years (from 6.5% to 24.7%) and the number of those who think it went down has decreased by more than threefold over the same period (from 41.6% to 12.4%).
FINAL RESULTS OF THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
On April 16, 2006 independent sociologists at the assistance of O. Manaev’s group (field study and processing of the data was carried by other team of professionals) conducted a nation opinion poll (those face-to-face interviewed are 1,594 persons aged 18 and over, margin of error doesn’t exceed 3%). The opinion poll aimed at verifying the data received during the previous opinion poll conducted at the assistance O. Manaev’s group from March 27 to April 6 of 2006.
NATIONAL POLL 04’06
1. Title of the study: | “Strengthening pro-“wide Europe” attitudes in Belarus” |
2. Topics of thematic coverage: | political, social and economic factors of development of Belarusian society, integration with Europe |
3. The aim: | to study the most important facilitators and obstacles of development of Belarusian society, to support Belarusian democratic forces for social transformations |
4. Descriptors: | market, economic attitudes, socio-political positions and attitudes, integration, free and democratic election, electoral behavior, opposition, political preferences, political parties, mass media |
5. Comparability: | most important questions were replicated |
6. Geographical area: | Belarus-national |
7. Source of information: | iiseps@iiseps.org |
8. Fieldwork dates: | 2006, April |
9. Population sampled: | 18+ years old residents of Belarus who are not currently in hospital, jail, military service |
10. Sampling: | clustered random |
11. Sample size: | 1594 respondents |
12. Mode of interviews: | face-to-face interview |
13. Control: | selective control of interviewers |
14. Related publications: | more then 10 publications in mass media |