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The UKL#376 compiled by Dominique Arel Chair of Ukrainian Studies, U of Ottawa Supported by the Dopomoha Ukraini Foundation 2 Jan 2006Three Months Before the 2006 Parliamentary Elections: The Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) has published the results of its latest public opinion poll regarding the electoral preferences of the Ukrainian population. The all-Ukraine representative survey, conducted between December 9-20, 2005, was entitled "Three Months Before the 2006 Parliamentary Elections." [A Ukrainian-language press release]. For the record, during the last parliamentary election of 2002, KIIS was able to predict the final score of each major electoral bloc well within the statistical margin of error. In terms of ratings, the Party of Regions of Viktor Yanukovych has surged ahead with 26.6%, followed by the Tymoshenko Bloc at 16.2% and the Yushchenko Bloc "Our Ukraine" at 14.2%. Three months ago, the KIIS electoral survey had the three blocs in a dead heat at approximately 14% each (Party of Regions 14.6%, Tymoshenko 14.1%, Our Ukraine 13.7%) (See Dominique Arel, "Six Months Before the 2006 Parliamentary Elections," UKL365, 16 October, at ) As in September, only three other parties are currently above the 3% barrier-the threshold allowing parties to be represented in parliament: the Communist Party of Ukraine, at 4.4% (down from 6.6% in September); Oleksandr Moroz's Socialist Party, at 3.9%, and the People's Bloc (Narodnyi blok) of Rada Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn, at 3.5%. The PORA electoral bloc registers a mere 0.7%. These ratings, it must be noted, include all electors, including the 23% (down from 30% in September) who do not plan to vote (or would not have voted had the elections taken place in December 2005). In other words, the survey estimates a turnout of 77%, which happens to be the exact turnout of the December 26, 2004, final round of the presidential election. Once those non-participants are excluded from the calculation of party support (as it is always done in the West), then the support for each party is increased, with no additional party crossing the 3% threshold. The more politically accurate figures are thus: Party of Regions 34.5%, Tymoshenko Bloc 21.0%, Our Ukraine 18.4%, Communist Party 5.1%, Socialist Party 5.0%, Lytvyn Bloc 4.5%. In September, Natalia Vitrenko's Progressive Social Party was making it to parliament, with 3.5% support among those actually intending to vote, but her support has since dwindled to 1.5%. The survey indicates that the Orange Revolution has had a profound effect on the restructuration of Ukrainian electoral politics. Despite the proliferation of electoral blocs, only three are really in the running, and they are precisely coalescing around the three major figures of the Orange Revolution: Viktor Yanukovych, Yulia Tymoshenko, and Viktor Yushchenko (given here in order of their current parliamentary electoral support). On either side of the "barricade," the minor parties/blocs are either collapsing or barely registering a blip. On the anti-Orange side, the major story is the downfall of the Communist Party of Ukraine, which still garnered 20% of the vote as recently as four years ago, during the 2002 parliamentary elections, and whose support has melted from 9.5% to 5.1% between the September and December 2005 KIIS surveys. Meanwhile, the Social-Democratic Party (United) [SDPUo] of former Kuchma chief of staff Viktor Medvedchuk, which obtained 6.3% of the vote in 2002, is all but gone at 0.2%. Vitrenko received 3.2% in 2002, not enough to cross the then threshold of 4% (since lowered to 3%) and, as noted above, her ratings have been cut in two in the past three months. On the Orange side, the Socialist Party is hanging on at 5.0% (down from 6.9% in 2002), PORA is at 0.7%, while the four electoral blocs of Yevhen Marchuk, Reform and Order (Pynzenyk), Zinchenko, and Kostenko-Pliushch are virtually at zero. The major difference between the 2006 parliamentary election and the two that preceded it (2002 and 1998) is that, for the first time, all deputies will be elected through proportional representation (PR). This means that the percentage of seats allocated to electoral blocs in parliament will mirror their score in the election. In 2002, by contrast, only half of the seats were selected through PR, and the other half in first-past-the-post races in individual ridings. The pro-government coalition did poorly in the PR race, but swept the other half, to ensure itself a (highly contested) majority in parliament. In a PR contest, however, a certain proportion of the vote is "wasted," namely, the vote cast for electoral blocs that did not cross the threshold. According to the December 2006 KIIS survey, had the election been taking place in December, approximately 11.5% of the vote would have been wasted, since the total scores of the six electoral blocs crossing the parliamentary threshold amount to 88.5%. This 11.5% of the vote would then be proportionally reallocated to the six "winning" blocs, to ensure that parliament has a full slate of deputies (450). After reallocation, the Party of Regions would receive approximately 39% of the seats, the Tymoshenko Bloc 23.7%, Our Ukraine 20.8, the Socialists 5.6%, the Communists 4.8% and the Lytvyn Bloc 4.5%. What these numbers suggest is that the 2006 election will be extremely close. The Party of Regions and their natural ally, the Communist Party, would combine for 44.8% of the seats, while the two Orange blocs (Tymoshenko and Yushchenko) are currently at 44.5%. To be sure, the Socialist Party of Moroz, with its 5.6%, could bring the Orangists a hair ahead of 50%, except that Moroz is admittedly furious at Yushchenko's decision to renege on its commitment to constitutional reforms. In this head-to-head contest, the Socialists and Lytvyn's coalition could very well have the balance of power. One obvious note of caution: these projections are based on a survey, with a normal statistical margin of error (more pronounced for smaller parties), and the election is still three months away. But there is no mistaking that we are headed to an election "too close to call," as Americans pollsters are fond to say. There is also no mistaking that we are headed to an election as geographically polarized as the Orange Revolution vote. Yanukovych's Party of Regions is getting 71.6% support in the East (up from 51.5% in September) and 47.0% in the South (up from 27.9%), but a mere 12.3% in the Center and 6.2% in the West. Conversely, the Tymoshenko Bloc is performing at 32.1% in the West and 36.9% in the Center, but only 10.5% in the South and 4.2% in the East. Yushchenko's Our Ukraine is at 42.1% in the West and 20.1% in the Center, but his supports plunges to 11.5% in the South and 3.3% in the East. If the Tymoshenko and Yushchenko scores are combined into an "Orange" vote, the Yanukovych and Communist scores combined into an "anti-Orange" vote, and the Moroz and Lytvyn scores are counted separately, then we get the following regional breakdown: East (anti-Orange 78.4, Orange 7.5), South (anti-Orange 54.9, Orange 22.0), Center (anti-Orange 18.3, Orange 57.0), West (anti-Orange 7.3, Orange 74.2). Within the Orange coalition, thus, Yushchenko is ahead of Tymoshenko 42-32 in the West, but trails her 20-37 in the Center (with Moroz's Socialists performing at 8.5% in the Center). Not much contest in the East, where Yanukovych's Party of Regions is getting ten times more support (71.6%) than Yushchenko and Tymoshenko combined (7.5%). In the South, the Yanukovych vote is more than twice (47.0%) that of Tymoshenko and Yushchenko combined (22.0%). While these regional distinctions will have no direct influence on the composition of the Ukrainian parliament, since all seats will be allocated based on a proportional representation of the national vote, it is important to bear them in mind for two reasons. First, the regions most affected by the "gas war" currently under way between Russia and Ukraine will precisely the regions who massively voted against the Orange Revolution a year ago, and that are poised to do so again in similar proportions in March 2006. The silver lining, for Yushchenko, is that the Yanukovych support was already so high in Eastern Ukraine, before the gas crisis, that he has, literally, little to lose. On the other hand, the election being so close, even a little nudge towards Yanukovych could alter the balance of power in parliament. The crucial battleground, as was the case a year ago, will be Central Ukraine, which is still registering enormous support for the Orange electoral blocs (57-18). The current crisis could either hurt the Orange blocs in rural Ukraine, or provoke a greater backlash against Russia, as may have happened a year ago, having the effect of solifying the Orange vote. A most interesting trend, in that regard, is that Tymoshenko, admittedly more radical than Yushchenko in her public statements, and certainly more "nationalist" in the eyes of the anti-Orangists, is actually performing much better in Central Ukraine (where, as noted above, she is leading the Yushchenko Our Ukraine bloc 37-20), than in the nationalist stronghold of Western Ukraine (where Our Ukraine is leading Tymoshenko 42-32). Since the KIIS September 2005, Tymoshenko has increased her ratings from 29% to 36% in Central Ukraine, while Our Ukraine has stagnated at 20%. This could suggest that the ongoing Russian power-play over gas supplies could backfire in the Ukrainian heartland. In terms of the level of popular trust in national figures, the ratings of both Yushchenko and Tymoshenko, which remained for a long time in the range of more than 50-60% throughout 2005, the highest figures ever recorded for politicians in independent Ukraine, plunged considerably in the wake of the Tymoshenko early September dismissal. The level of trust in Yushchenko is now at 33.5% (down from 37.4% in September), below that of Tymoshenko at 36.0% (up from 33.5% in September), and of Viktor Yanukovych at 34.2% (data from September unvailable). All three scores, however, are within a statistical margin of error and it is fair to say that the three leaders are also in a dead heat on the trust scale. Once again, regional differences are significant. Yushchenko is trusted by 58.8% in the West and 46.5% in the Center, but only 18.9% in the South (down from 27.4% in September) and 8.9% in the East (down from 14.5% in September). Tymoshenko is trusted by 58.3% in the West and 52.6% in the Center (up from 42.4% in September), but only 20.2% in the South and 11.0% in the East. Yanukovych is trusted by only 7.7% in the West and 14.0% in the Center, but 46.5% in the South and 72.1% in the East. The argument, often heard in the past year, that Yanukovych and his acolytes were not "legitimate" representatives of their constituencies may have to be revised, especially since in the post-Orange era, most observers agree that the media is far freer than it was before. Yanukovych may seem like a "bandit" to Orange supporters, but the fact of the matter is that a huge majority of Eastern Ukrainians trust him. The survey then asked a few questions regarding the status of Ukraine vis-а-vis Russia. The first question was whether the "state independence of Ukraine" is "important" or "not important" to the respondent. The results clearly demonstrate that the geographical polarization of the vote in Ukraine is not about secession. Three-fourths (75.2%) of Ukrainians (in the civic sense, i.e., citizens of Ukraine) consider independence to be important, and in Southern (67.9%) and Eastern (62.0%) Ukraine, that support is at a level of a constitutional majority. A variation on the same theme is whether respondents believe that "Ukraine and Russia must unite in one state." Only 22.6% answered in the affirmative, with that proportion reaching 29.5% in the South and 42.3% in the East. While these latter two figures may give pause, two observations are in order: (1) the "South" includes Crimea where anti-independence are many times higher than in the rural oblasts of Odesa, Mykolaiv and Kherson (2) support against Ukrainian independence has decreased considerably in the past decade, from 36% in July 1994 (during the presidential election) to 22% last month. The decrease, on the other hand, did not seem to have affected Eastern Ukraine all that much, since a resilient core of more than 40% are still in favor of some sort of union with Russia. Yet 40% is not a majority. At best, one could say that the Eastern Ukrainian electorate is ambivalent towards Ukraine, but with a moderately pro-Ukrainian stance. "Orange" politicians, and many observers, tend to confound Eastern Ukrainian demands for "federalism" or "autonomy" with "separatism," but this is not what the public opinion data appears to be indicating. |
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