Current level of negative values of social indices doesn’t lead to growth of oppositional moods in the Belarusian society (Table 1). For such growth extraordinary events, accompanied not by a decrease, but by a collapse of social indices, are required, as it was observed in June-September, 2011: 28.3% is an absolute record. In two years the share of Belarusians who answer affirmatively the question “Do you consider yourself in opposition to the current regime?” was cut by half.
When the level of oppositional moods in society is low, there is no point in counting on a high trust rating of opposition parties (Table 2). Thus the activity of parties is secondary. Let’s look at the phenomenon of the Russian politician A. Navalny as an illustration. His local success in Moscow wasn’t reflected in any way on the federal level. According to “Levada-Center”’s last poll (September 20-24), only 1% of Russians is ready to support A. Navalny as a presidential candidate!
The trust rating of oppositional parties is connected with the level of oppositional moods in society, but doesn’t follow it like a thread follows a needle. On the whole it should be recognized as quite stable and therefore its quarterly changes don’t always go beyond the statistical error.
Answers to the question “Various people make various evaluations of A. Lukashenko’s work on the post of the President of Belarus. Which one would you rather agree with?” are presented in Table 3 depending on attitude towards A. Lukashenko, and in Table 4 answers to the same question are presented depending on attitude towards political parties. Let’s remind that in the first case the trust rating is 46.7%, and in the second – 15.3%.
A fleeting glance is enough to notice a great solidarity of the Belarusians trusting A. Lukashenko. Among this group of respondents 38% completely share A. Lukashenko’s views and only 0.7% are ready to support anyone, but him. It should seem, it couldn’t be different.
However among the Belarusians trusting the oppositional political parties, 16.5% completely share A. Lukashenko’s views and only 18.7% consider it necessary to support anyone, but “the last dictator of Europe”.
Trying to explain the friability of oppositional electorate exclusively by absence of a single democratic leader would be a mistake. People sharing democratic views around the world unlike their authoritative opponents are very reluctant to form a single rank. Therefore those who don’t consider themselves as supporters of A. Lukashenko are not necessarily going to support anyone but him.
Table 3 data allows us to estimate approximately A. Lukashenko’s firm electorate. In September 18.4% of respondents completely shared his vies, which was 277 people of 1510 respondents (trust A. Lukashenko – 268, don’t trust – 3, DA – 6). But the total of the respondents trusting A. Lukashenko was 706 people (46.7% of respondents). Therefore, not all “trusters” completely share his views. A simple calculation shows that the share of those who completely share his views is 40% from those who trust him and 17.7% from the total number of respondents. The last percent means the sought capacity of A. Lukashenko’s firm electorate.
All other trusters trust with certain conditions. Therefore if the conditions change for worse for A. Lukashenko, the share of his supporters will start to reduce. Let’s note that at the peak of crisis of 2011 the electoral rating of the head of state made up 20.5%, otherwise, electoral “nucleus” dumped almost all its “shells”.
From a course of nuclear physics we can learn that a change of structure of nuclei requires fundamentally larger expenses of power in comparison with the expenses allowing changing of their electronic shell. Extending the analogy let’s note that the change of electoral “nucleus” of personalistic leaders of modern authoritative states requires economic crises of other depth and other duration in comparison with the crisis of 2011.
24.4% of respondents answered the question “Do you think that Belarusian opposition understands problems and concerns of people like you?” affirmatively, 56.6% – negatively and every fifth had difficulties with the answer (19%). The share of affirmative answers thus exceeded the trust rating of opposition parties by 9.1%.
Undoubtedly, the ability to understand problems and concerns of potential voters is an indispensable condition for receiving electoral support. This condition is necessary, but not sufficient. A politician has to inspire confidence in his capability to fulfill the obligations. But the world experience shows that in conditions of the consolidated authoritarianism the fulfilling of the second condition is extremely complicated.