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"Gallup" Presents Objective Data

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  • "Gallup" Presents Objective Data

    "GALLUP" PRESENTS OBJECTIVE DATA
    Armen Tsatouryan

    Hayots Ashkhar Daily
    29 Nov 08
    Armenia

    What has changed over the past 10 months?

    The large scale-social survey conducted in the capital city and marzes
    by the representatives of the Lithuanian department of "Gallup"
    organization and the Georgian IMP organization 10 months after
    presidential elections and the end of the 2008 "spring-fall" political
    season are important in terms of clarifying the post-electoral
    dynamics.

    It should be noted from the outset that this social survey presents
    large-scale, conscientious and thorough work whose separate parts
    are even like a scientific research.

    The section concerning the domestic policy issues contains information
    about the population's awareness of and attitude to the political
    figures and organizations, presenting concrete and clear-cut data
    in numbers.

    What immediately attracts attention in the first section entitled
    "The Population's Awareness of the Political Figures" is that no new
    politician apart from Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan has been in the
    domain of visibility of our citizens over the past 10 months.

    And because the Prime Minister is not actually a newcomer on the
    political arena either, our voters' awareness can be considered
    strictly unsatisfactory as restrict their knowledge about the
    politicians to those activists whose names became well -known during
    the 2007-2008 electoral marathon.

    This is first of all accounted for by the fact that the radical
    opposition together with its leader L. Ter-Petrosyan has blocked
    the way of the newcomers, having captured the political arena after
    the presidential elections. But we believe this situation, which
    is quite normal for the first 10 months following the elections,
    will not last long. With regard to the three best-known activists,
    the picture here is exactly the same as it was before the presidential
    elections: Serge Sargsyan, Levon Ter-Petrosyan and Arthur Baghdasaryan.

    Quite interesting are the results recorded in the section entitled
    "The Population's Awareness of Political Organizations".

    The top party in this list is "Prosperous Armenia" (with a rating of
    98.19%) which, despite being the best-known political organization
    and even having higher records than the Republican Party (97.41%),
    does not have the highest electoral rating. Such phenomenon is
    probably accounted for by the party's pompous name which sounds more
    impressive to the ordinary voters of the marzes than the names of
    other political parties.

    But what attracts attention is that 60 percent of the voters are
    not simply "insufficiently informed" of the leading parties of
    Armenia. They have only "heard" something about their existence. This
    is also a precise observation which testifies to the conscient
    iousness of the authors. This may probably account for the fact that
    the name of Gagik Tsaroukyan, leader of "Prosperous Armenia" party,
    was ticked in the list of the 10 Republican activists, and the name
    of Raffi Hovhannisyan, leader of "Heritage" party, was ticked in the
    list of the more prominent figures of "Prosperous Armenia".

    More important is the third question which runs as follows, "Which
    politician's attitudes and views are more or less close to you?" The
    absolute leader in this list is incumbent President Serge Sargsyan
    with a rating of 44.4 percent. Such a high record stands in contrast
    to the 10 percent rating of L. Ter-Petrosyan. Leader of "Heritage"
    party Raffi Hovhannisyan has surpassed the ex-President with his
    rating of 18.57 percent.

    That's to say, the 53 percent of votes obtained by the incumbent
    President on February 19 has reduced only by 9 percent over the past
    10 months while his main contender's rating has reduced exactly twice
    as much in the same period. Taking into consideration the fact that
    this is not a pre-election survey but rather, a survey conducted
    in a period between two elections, we can definitely arrive at the
    conclusion that S. Sargsyan's rating has even recorded a certain
    growth in comparison with February 2008.

    The 44.4 percent rating recorded at present equals at least a 60
    percent rating20recorded at election time.

    In the meantime, the rating of the incumbent President tends to
    increase further, because in response to the question "Who will you
    vote for during the next presidential elections if the things continue
    to develop in the same spirit?", 59.9 percent of the respondents
    mentioned the name of S. Sargsyan and only 6.7 percent gave the name
    of the ex-President. Our citizens do not trust L. Ter-Petrosyan
    even in the role of the contender of the incumbent President. As
    seen from their responses to different questions, they pin hopes on
    "some other activist", i.e. they look forward to the appearance of
    a new opposition leader who is still unknown to society.

    Of course, a single analytical report is not enough for summarizing
    all the repeated regularities and new tendencies found as a result of
    the recent "Gallup" survey. However, as shown by the general picture
    of such studies, the overall rating of the main political parties
    has remained unchanged, but there have been noticeable changes in
    the ratings of the political leaders.

    Our society's little trust in L. Ter-Petrosyan, an activist who
    suffered defeat in the presidential elections and continued the
    electoral struggle till autumn, has reduced more than twice, whereas
    the rating of the authorities and hence - the incumbent President,
    has steadily increased.
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