Posts Tagged 2nd round voters

So, the first round of the Ukrainian elections is over. As expected, two contenders reached the home straight – Viktor Yanukovych, with 35.32% of votes, and Yuliya Tymoshenko, with 25.05% of the 66.76% of those who came to the polls.

International organisations called the elections fair and free of mass violations. Meanwhile, the situation with the National Exit Poll remains unclear. By contrast to the other five exit polls and official Central Electoral Committee results, it reported only a 4% difference of votes between Tymoshenko and Yanukovych, while the rest guessed right the 10% gap. What was it – a mistake, a difference of methods, something else? Or maybe their data were true, while the official results were influenced by some unclear and unknown to us factors – we don’t know yet. But, as many think, we may see a long and “fascinating” judicial whirligig of non-admission of the election results, where all possible data will be studied.

But this will happen later. For the time being, let us concentrate on what we have in solid residue after the first round.

Some preliminary conclusions:

-          Deep disappointment of the people with the present Ukrainian politics, both of the current authorities and the so-called opposition. 33% of voters did not come to the polls at all. The two contenders who reached the second round together collected 60% of the active voters, which means only 40% of all voters in Ukraine. Consequently, those two leaders failed to win support of at least half of Ukraine’s voters. And go into the second round with a scanty store.

-          Decline of the ratings of the “orange” camp leaders – Yushchenko-Tymoshenko, and the frozen rating of the so-called opposition “blue” leader Yanukovych. The disastrously meagre 5% of support for Yushchenko relates to the huge 10% lag of Tymoshenko behind Yanukovych. At that, the “blue” camp leader just managed to retain his votes, mainly because in the economic crisis he was lucky enough to be in the opposition, and the economic decline was associated not with him but with his opponents.

-          The geographic division between West-Central and East-Southern voters did not pass away. Since the latest parliamentary elections of 2007, there have been only slight shifts in the distribution of votes between the “orange” and “blue” camps.

-          “New” or “alternative” faces in politics are in demand. The “orange” largely lost to them, not to the “blue” camp: the votes of Tihipko and Yatsenyuk are mainly those of the “orange” voters disappointed in the current “orange” leaders.

-          Meanwhile, the demand for new faces in politics was not fully met. There were several reasons for that:

• those faces were not brand new at all (Yatsenyuk, despite his young age, is long present in the Ukrainian politics and used to try most of the top executive posts; Tihipko in 2004 headed Yanukovych’s election staff, also occupied high positions, so, he looks new just because he reappeared after a few years of oblivion);
• absence of new ideas in the so-called “new” politicians. People did not just support those two candidates, rather, they did not want to vote for the main candidates;
• and the main reason lies in the existing political system and the refusal to use the majority system at all levels of elections. The political “elevator of personalities” does not work in Ukraine, as a result, new ideas simply cannot sprout, and old ones (even absolutely correct ones, such as that of European integration) are discredited by the poor conduct of the current politicians.

-          The elections were irrational. Symbols and feelings fought, rather than ideas and pragmatic interests. Nobody paid attention to electoral programmes. The lack of ideas at the elections was showily demonstrated by the refusal of all main contenders to hold TV debates.

What do we come with to the second round? Who will decide its result, and what factors will influence voters’ choice?

The choice of February 7 will indeed be a difficult one.

The task is easier for those who voted for one of the two contenders in the first round. They are likely to support their candidates in the second round as well. But it is not they who will decide the future presidency of the country.

It will be decided by the undecided, or “free” votes. For them, it will be more difficult to make their choice. Such people are many:

-          first of all, nearly 40% of those who already voted for other than those two candidates, or voted against all;

-          additionally, some 33% of those who did not vote in the first round at all, waiting for its results to make their choice in the second round.

In absolute figures, we speak of about 21 million people (proceeding from the total number of voters – 36,576,763 persons, if all of them opt to come to the polls).

Today Tymoshenko and Yanukovych are competing exactly for their votes. Both realise that they can offer those people nothing brand new or what they desire, because those people prefer to think, rather than to feel. Neither Tymoshenko, nor Yanukovych, all the more so, has ever had much success with such people.

But exactly those people will decide the fate of the country’s presidency. Neither mathematics nor political science can predict the distribution of their votes, because those “free” voters, no matter how deeply philosophical they may be, will have to choose not rationally but emotionally, with a tint of “ethical-aesthetic” considerations. Without any illusions whatsoever…

Most probably, neither Tihipko nor Yatsenyuk will call upon their voters to vote for any of the remaining candidates. First, because they may risk losing their newly-gained electoral capital. After all, people voted for them because they are neither Tymoshenko nor Yanukovych. Second, they realise that those elections are nothing but history for them, and they should target local elections and probably early elections of the parliament (the Verkhovna Rada) as soon as 2010. And third, even if they call upon their voters to vote for one of the finalists, their supporters may not hurry to fulfil their will. Yushchenko already said that he saw no big difference between Tymoshenko and Yanukovych, that they were both anti-Ukrainian, so, he will vote against all.

Hence, “free” voters will have to make their own choice, and it will be a painful one.

It will be painful also because those thinking voters “free” in their spirit will have to choose among two alien for them candidates. As I put it earlier, both Tymoshenko and Yanukovych are “candidates for stability” for whom freedom and maintenance of political pluralism in the country are not a priority, which the undecided voters well realise.

So, in the second round, they may follow one of the following patterns of choice:

-          “a choice between two evils” – «they are both bad candidates, but “this” one at least does not do (or, on the contrary, does) what “that” will (or will not);

-          protest voting for one of the candidates – “I may dislike this candidate, but I will still vote for her or him, for that one not to win;

-          protest voting against both candidates – the third line of the voting ballot “against all” – “I cannot but come to the polls because I consider this my public duty. But let one of them win not by my hand”;

-          non-appearance at the polling station and dissociation from the knowingly bad choice.

How to vote, everybody will probably decide closer to the day of voting. Before that, it will be difficult to name the winner.

Both Yanukovych and especially the first-round runner-up Tymoshenko will now hurl themselves into the race for the “free” voters. But in reality, they cannot do much. In the past years, voters have thoroughly studied both.

Everyone can more or less imagine what Ukraine may look like with each of those candidates…

Exactly with that knowledge and imagery will people come to the polls on the 7th of February…