Exit polls help keep elections honest

 Besides being entertainment fodder for TV talk shows on election night, exit polls in Ukraine are used to verify that elections are conducted legitimately and to ensure votes are counted accurately.

This year’s Oct. 28 parliamentary election
is no exception.

Yet only one of five planned exit polls has
the stated goal of keeping the vote count honest.

Together with the Kyiv International
Institute of Sociology and Razumkov Center, the Democratic Initiatives
Foundation said its main goal is to “ensure the effective civic control over
the fairness of the electoral process.”

It’s the think tank’s 12th nationwide exit
poll held since 1998 for this purpose.

“Exit polls in Ukraine provide more than
just preliminary voting results and content for TV shows on election night,”
said Iryna Bekeshkina, director of Democratic Initiatives Foundation. “They are
also a method for controlling the vote count. They allow us to see who voted
and how in terms of voter demographics. It’s an irreplaceable source of
knowledge of electoral sociology.”

Democratic Initiatives Foundation said it
will also estimate voter turnout by using the so-called single-step method that
establishes the pace of voters coming to polling stations. Other polling firms
will use voter turnout data from the Central Election Commission.

Perhaps the most notable application of
exit poll results in Ukraine came immediately after the Nov. 21 presidential
election runoff between Viktor Yushchenko and today’s President Viktor
Yanukovych. Democratic Initiatives distributed printed exit poll results on the
streets of Kyiv that showed Yushchenko had won when the majority of TV stations
and print media had reported that Yanukovych did. Yushchenko’s legal team also
cited the exit poll data as evidence of vote tampering during the subsequent
Constitutional Court hearing. As a result, the court called for a repeat runoff
on Dec. 26 that vaulted Yushchenko to the presidency.

More oversight will come from election
watchdog OPORA. It will conduct a parallel vote count at a nationwide
representative sample of 1,000 polling stations employing 3,800 observers.
Chief OPORA coordinator Olha Aivazovska said her observers will use mechanical
people counters to gauge voter turnout as well. Results of the vote count will
be announced at 9:30 a.m., on Oct. 29, the day after elections. 

Aivazovska told Interfax-Ukraine she’ll
call the election falsified if her observers note “a critical mass” of vote
counting-related violations.  The
non-profit reportedly is also planning full coverage of polling stations within
one or several voting districts.

However an American pollster questioned the
evidentiary value of covering 1,000 polling stations to deter vote tampering.

“A parallel vote count has useful news
value, but I’m not sure whether conducting a parallel vote count at a 1,000
precincts (out of more than 33,000) has evidentiary value to prove election
wrongdoing,” said Bruce Barcelo, whose Florida-based public opinion research
firm conducted an exit poll and parallel vote count during the recent Georgian
parliamentary election this month.

“The main thing about having both exit
polls and a parallel vote count is the deterrent effect,” he added.

A poll commissioned by Democratic
Initiatives and financed by the Dutch Embassy in early October found that only
9 percent think the election will be completely free and fair, while 47 percent
said it will be not at all or not very free and fair.

And the two pre-election observation
reports by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe have noted
cases of incumbency abuse, vote buying, and a lack of political pluralism and
limited political campaign coverage on the most watched TV stations.

Yanukovych and Prime Minister Azarov have
stated they’re instituting measures to ensure a free and fair election.

The remaining three exit polls will be
conducted by Rating, Research & Branding, and TNS in Ukraine together with
SOCIS, and Savik Shuster Studio.

Rating’s exit poll is funded by political
parties and individuals whom the firm’s director, Oleksiy Antypovych, wouldn’t
name. SOCIS and TNS in Ukraine, both headed by veteran sociologist Mykola
Churylov, were commissioned by TV channels ICTV and Inter.

ICTV is owned by billionaire philanthropist
Viktor Pinchuk, and Inter is controlled by First Deputy Prime Minister Valeriy
Khoroshkovsky.

And respected pollster Yevhen Kopatko’s
Research & Branding is associated with the ruling Party of Regions. He is
the former director of the Donetsk Information and Analytical Center.

Neither Savik Shuster nor his studio’s
in-house sociological service could be reached for details about their exit
poll.

GfK Ukraine Deputy Director Hlib Vyshlinsky told the Kyiv Post that his firm will conduct regional exit
polls in the Oblasts of Zakarpattya, Khmelnytsky and Donetsk, totaling 270
polling stations.

Nationwide
exit polls in the Oct. 28 parliamentary election

Source:
publicly available information, Kyiv Post research

Kyiv
Post staff writer Mark Rachkevych can be reached at [email protected].