Besides that, political parties are busy with their ratings. That’s why they are conducting surveys. As for the results, it’s hard to say whether they are right or not. Experience has shown that it mostly depends on who orders them. In spite of that, several politicians told us that usually parties have two rating lists; one is internal and the other one is external. In the first list, they have correct and real information, as for the second list, it contains mostly overstated figures so as to make people sure that their rating is high.
As for statistics and such surveys, member of Republican party, Armen Ashotyan cited the idea of Otto Bismarck saying that “there are three kinds of lies; lie, strong lie and statistics”. After that he said, “Surveys may be subjective like many other instruments are”. We asked A. Ashotyan what the real rating of the Republican party was, to which he answered, “I think that parliamentary elections can be considered as a global public survey. During the 2003 parliamentary elections our party got over 23% of votes”. As for now, he says that since the last elections the rating of the Republican party has grown much and is still growing. “It is not less than 23%, as for its top range, it can be maximum”, assured A. Ashotyan. Since the defense minister recently joined the Republican party, we asked A. Ashotyan what he thought about the rating of their party after that. “The political consolidation that the Republican party has makes us hope that its rating will grow. However, many things depend on ourselves. I believe that now 30% of citizens are ready to give their votes to the Republican party”, said A. Ashotyan. He thinks that over 50% of citizens are bearers of nationalistic ideas and the party could get more votes. “During many years political processes were supported by the Republican party and this is proof that the Republican party is the leader of ideologies”, said A. Ashotyan. The communist party leaders also think that they are the leaders of ideologies. Secretary of Communist party Ruben Tovmasyan told us that he had been invited to speak on a television show on Kentron TV, where people were asked “whether the communist party could succeed or not” and 49% of those people answered yes. According to him, after the program many people have complained that they were trying to call the program but could not get connected. Accordingly, Mr. Tovmasyan thinks that the rating of the communist party is over 50%. As for National Unity party, they say that Artashes Geghamyan has the highest rating in Armenia as a politician. NU representatives told us that they believed in the results of a survey conducted by American “Gelapi” university, according to which 92% of people thought that their best leader could be Artashes Geghamyan. In response to a question asking “whom you would like to see in the president’s position”, 52% of people said that their candidate was Artashes Geghamyan. As for Rule of Law, they are going to conduct a survey too. Vice president of Rule of Law, Mher Shahgeldyan says that based on the results of the previous surveys and surveys conducted by international organizations ,he can assure that their party will get many votes. “In other words, Rule of Law is a leading party now and is one of those parties that is able to get many votes”, said M. Shahgeldyan. We asked member of the Armenian Democratci Party, Vardan Mkrtchyan what he thought about the rating of their party, to which he replied that they were not interested in their rating because they were busy with strengthening their regional headquarters before the parliamentary elections. “Our rating was too high in 2003 and in fact we got over 80% of votes. I believe that we have a high rating now too”, said V. Mkrtchyan and added that the real results will be seen after the coming parliamentary elections. “Our rating will not be less this time than we had during the previous elections”, assured V. Mkrtchyan. As for “Republic” party, they refused to tell us the results of the survey conducted by the mentioned American “Gelapi” university. “We are satisfied with the number of the votes that we received. However, we must work harder”, said member of party board Artak Zeylanyan. He said that according to the results of the survey conducted by the “Galepi” university, the rating of the current authorities is too low. A. Zeylanyan says that if they don’t violate the elections they will not be able to get enough votes to be elected.
Despite the fact that ARF conducts surveys time to time, they are not interested in them that much. According to ARF member Spartak Seyranyan, they conduct surveys once three months. He says that these surveys are not rating surveys, but rather, they are different. The reason why they conduct such surveys is to find out the approach of citizens to different issues. A. Seyranyan says that they are interested in surveys, but the results of surveys conducted a year prior to elections don’t mean anything. “I am not interested in targeted and campaigning surveys at all. During the previous elections many parties said that that the reputation of their parties was too high, but during the elections they couldn’t even get 1% of votes”, said A. Seyranyan.
In spite of all this, there are many small parties in Armenia that say that their ratings are too high, but probably the scheme of the future parliament has already been drawn somewhere. In other words, regardless of how public vote will be distributed, we know which parties will be in the parliament.