You're reading: Communists thrive on Party of Regions’ decline

One party's loss is another one's gain. This is proving true for the Communist Party, which is having an unexpected honeymoon with voters despite years of collaboration with the Party of Regions, which is losing out big.

The June polls show that
since 2007, when the Communists mustered 5.3 percent of the votes in
the parliamentary election, their popularity has doubled.

According to the Kyiv
International Institute of Sociology, 10.6 percent of those who
intend to vote are ready to support Communists. Another poll by the
Razumkov Center and Democratic Initiatives Foundation gave them 7.1
of votes in June. Both are representative national polls with a
margin error of 2 percent.

To get elected in the
national constituency, parties need to muster at least 5 percent of
votes. But only half of the 450-seat Verkhovna Rada is elected
through party lists. The rest will come though single mandate
districts.

Hennadiy Korzhov, a
sociologist at the Donetsk-based Institute for Social Studies and
Political Analysis, says that since much of the Party of Regions’
electorate is demoralized, some of “those who supported the Party
of Regions can move to [support] the Communist party.”

Communists,
who have always been present in Ukraine’s parliament, used to get
up to a fifth of votes in the 1990s. They started losing popularity
in the 2000s when the Party of Regions took over their home base.

But
as disappointment grew and unfulfilled promises stacked up for the
Party of Regions, the Communists started to gain once again, showing
that the nation needs a left-wing alternative.

Korzhov
says that “most
of the people are demoralized because the promises given by the Party
of Regions were not fulfilled.”

The
Communists managed to capture the mood, partly because of an
impressively coherent and well-designed campaign that critics say is
the best one yet in this election, which is officially starting on
July 30.

Maksym
Savanevsky, founder of Watcher.com, a website about all things
digital, says that the Communists’ campaign is emotional, has
fantastic slogans that are easy to remember, and targets new
electorate, as well as the traditional one. A lot of the campaign is
taking place online for the first time ever.

“They’re
running a campaign that targets the radical left-wing electorate
[across the spectrum of voters],” Savanevsky said.

The
campaign promotes a luxury tax, proclaims that bandits and corrupt
officials should go to prison, and promises free medical care and
education for all.

It
bodes well with the expectations of the electorate. A May study of
electoral moods by the Democratic Initiatives Foundation think tank
showed that joblessness, fear of economic crisis, social insecurity
for the needy, increase of the cost of living, poor medical services
and corruption top the list of voter concerns ahead of the election.

The
Communists, who have had an alliance with the Party of Regions and
often voted in unison with the pro-presidential party, as well as
amassed impressive personal fortunes in many cases, nevertheless
managed to preserve the image of fighters for justice and for the
people.

The Party of Regions,
however, lost about 7 percent of support compared to the 2007
election. It still remains the most popular political force in the
country with 27 percent of support, according to the June poll by
the Razumkov center.

Mykhaylo Mishchenko, a sociologist at Razumkov Center, says that the
number of the Communists in the next parliament will probably stay
the same as in the current convocation. They have 26 deputies in the
faction now.

Mishchenko expects few or no Communists coming through majority
constituencies due to the fact that competing with their allies from
the Party of Regions will be difficult or impossible.

Kyiv Post editor Katya Gorchinskaya can be reached at [email protected] and Yuriy Onyshkiv can be reached at [email protected]