А. LUKASHENKO’S RATING WENT UP. A LITTLE

The survey findings show that in October-December 2002 as compared to September voters’ attitude towards A. Lukashenko slightly improved (See Table 1). Such rise in indicators of attitude can be explained by his energetic public activity in the given period. The dynamics of the overall value of all four indicators expressed in the electorate’s typology on its attitude to A. Lukashenko is given in Table 2. As one can see, although the number of his convinced supporters went up (from 10.7% to 14.3%), the number of convinced opponents increased by almost the same number (from 41.3% to 44.7%). That resulted from further polarization of the vacillatory, i.e. those who support A. Lukashenko on certain issues and are against him on other issues. Clearly, the overall tendency of the last five years has developed against the first Belarusian president.
Table 1. Dynamics of major indexes of attitude to A. Lukashenko, %

Table 2. Dynamics of electoral types, %

Meanwhile, two thirds of Belarusians (66.1%) are certain that after the 2001 presidential election A. Lukashenko’s rating dropped (See Table 3). In fact, that is an estimation of the president’s activity over the given period, whether or not he fulfilled his election campaign promises.

Table 3. Dynamics of distribution of answers to the question: “Do you think after the 2001 presidential election A. Lukashenko’s rating (i.e. the readiness of the population to vote for him at the next presidential election) has increased or decreased?”, %

Table 4 characterizes the dynamics of the closed rating of key figures of Belarus public policy. As we can notice, A. Lukashenko tops the list leaving the rest far behind, the rating of most of them does not exceed the margin of error. That is another proof of the fact that so far the population has seen no real competitors to the present head of state.

Table 4. Dynamics of distribution of answers to the following question: “If at a new election the following politicians were the candidates for presidency, how would you vote?”, % (closed question)

* The given name was not offered in the questionnaire

Table 5 also proves it and presents answers to the direct question about a possible rival to the president. As we see, only 18.2% of the respondents can name such candidate. But only three fourth of them would vote for him at the next presidential election. 15.1% of those who do not know a worthy competitor to the president can vote for A. Lukashenko. The rest have made no choice yet.

Table 5. Dynamics of distribution of answers to the question: “Do you know a candidate who can successfully compete with A. Lukashenko at the presidential election?”, %

Table 6. Dynamics of answers to the question: “For whom did you vote at the 2001 presidential election?”, %

Table 6 demonstrates a high recurrence of voting results at the 2001 presidential election. Therefore, it proves that the official election results were reasonably put in question.