History is said to teach us one main lesson, that there are no lessons from history. Watching the current election campaign, it is obvious that no one seems aware of the blunders made during previous such campaigns in Russia and Ukraine. Listing them would require too much space, and hence I will focus on mistakes resulting from underestimating the public opinion factor. So-called blind campaigns are evident even now, shown primarily in the wrong assessment of the factor of personal image and excessive emphasis on the administrative resource.
DO WE REALLY NEED PUBLIC OPINION POLLS?
Sociology is not respected among our politicians; they do not trust such polls and generally consider polling unnecessary. Suffice it to recall the 1999 elections, when Leonid Kuchma was the only one to address several friendly words to the sociologists. The other candidates still tell stories about rigged turnouts (although there is no supporting evidence whatever from the forecasts and post-election studies). In 1998, polls were the exception rather than the rule.
The politicians’ attitude is understandable; sociology does not offer unequivocal answers to most questions but requires substantial funding and time.
Still, sociology is one campaign element where cutting costs simply makes no sense.
Without polls it is extremely difficult to assess the overall political and socioeconomic situation in a given constituency.
Without polls it is physically impossible to assess other parties’ and politicians’ popularity or the level of electoral activity to target groups of voters, determining the desired and actual candidate image, etc. No personal candidate-voter contact can provide this kind of data and nothing can be achieved without having this information.
As for the polls’ reliability, it proves sufficient for strategic planning.
ON THE COMPLEX OF OVERESTIMATING
One of the most frequent mistakes resulting from lack of attention to polling results is a candidate’s overstatement of his own importance in the eyes of the constituency. Candidates often believe that people must vote for them just because they are such nice guys (because they did this and will surely do that, etc.). And whether the electorate might have a different view on what the candidate thinks is good remains an open question.
Without polls it is often impossible to assess certain features of a candidate’s real image. In addition, even if some traits are recognized as truly attractive, this does not necessarily mean that the candidate will win. One is reminded of a funny incident in the previous elections when an old woman, asked about her choice, replied that all the candidates were good and were busy doing important jobs, so she had voted for the Communist because he was good for nothing anyway.
Another evidence of self-overestimation is the naive conviction of many politicians that all they need to win the electorate is come out and talk to the people. In reality, people’s interest must be kindled throughout the campaign, otherwise the politician will no longer be interesting and the electorate might well forget all about him by the election. Planning and timing information placement in the course of campaign is quite complicated and even the best-qualified technicians tend to make mistakes. For example, during the 1998 campaign, the Hromada team miscalculated the time-limits, the result being that the party leaders simply had nothing to discuss with the electorate in the last two weeks, while the campaign was otherwise almost flawlessly planned.
Apparently most voters take an interest in politics only on the election eve and cast their votes using stereotypes and, strangely, common sense. Thus, most constituencies where the candidates would gain office and part of the majority also gave preference to the Communist Party. On the one hand, people tend to vote for the political force they know; on the other, they want to see a man in parliament capable of actually helping them with their needs.
In fact, there is a struggle between two stereotypes; people want to live like they did under the Soviets and like in the West, and they are realistic, aware that the Soviets are gone and that it is a long way to Western living standards. As a rule, they vote for the politician and party that confirm to either of the two categories.
THE ADMINISTRATIVE SYNDROME
Against this background all talk about the administrative resource being the principal component of the current campaign makes sense. The opposition politicians are afraid that their rivals in the “in” camp will pull administrative levers and once again engineer a situation in which common sense will prevail. And their fear is not completely without foundation.
It would be strange if people representing the powers that be did not in the course of campaign use evidence of their competence and ability to actually help the man in the street. But this is standing procedure with any party in power, it is hard to find fault with it. Can anyone blame a candidate for appealing to the electorate’s common sense? Hence, they try to reduce the notion of administrative resource to attempts by the authorities supposedly running counter to the law.
Indeed, such attempts are made. Everybody knows about managers threatening their employees with being laid off unless they vote for the right candidate. This is a typically comical situation, for few know of any cases when employees did get the pink slip, as it is practically impossible to tell who voted for whom. Such threats can become real only in an early election in a small populated area.
Still, politicians talking about the administrative resource usually deceive their electorate, posing as honest champions of human rights.
In the first place, being in opposition does not mean never using the administrative resource. Here is an example. A large industrial enterprise in Dnipropetrovsk where back wages or pay reductions before the so-called proletarian holidays and elections, and per shop opposition rally attendance quotas have long become traditional. Of course, this could be a coincidence, but somehow all such negative phenomena are clearly directed against the allegedly anti-people regime.
Second, watching politicians like Oleksandr Moroz, one is left wondering what such people could do without the administrative resource. After all, the 1999 election turnout meant Comrade Moroz’s political death, yet he surfaced again courtesy of the authorities’ dimwitted performance during the cassette scandal. Or take all the politicians from opposition parties with their stories about the president planning to destroy the parliamentary system; after they get their seats in parliament they proceed to stage brawls in hall, making the uselessness of Verkhovna Rada obvious not only to the president, but also to the electorate.
The greatest problem for the administrative resource and anti- resource campaigns is the ratio of administration and population feedback. A typical example might be a four-party bloc with the “practical political analysts” in the leadership paying so much attention to presidential approval, while seeming to forget all about the electorate. How is one to explain otherwise the fact that the name of the bloc was twice invented by journalists?
The situation with the opposition blocs is no better; they talk about the president too much, scarcely mentioning their own programs. Oleksandr Moroz, for one, believes that the main controversy among the pro-presidential forces consists in their business interests, yet he denies any differences between Rukh and CPU. Then how are we to explain that the former are for private property and private land ownership while the latter are ready to fight tooth and nail against this?
The way out of this situation is quite simple; our politics is afflicted with a lack of techniques. They talk and talk about people being a much greater threat than technologies. In reality, the greatest damage is inflicted on this country by people not using any technologies. Mistakes made during an election campaign are nothing compared to mistakes made afterward, in Verkhovna Rada. And the mistakes in both cases have the same origin: the inability and unwillingness to reckon with public opinion; distrust of professionals, sociologists and political analysts, and the absence of clearly defined and well-planned strategies.
