The public polls conducted by the Armenian sociological union within the period of October 27 – November 3, which have been prepared and analyzed by “Baltic Surveys/The Gallup Organization (Dr. R.Alisauskiene)”, express the ratings of 13 Armenian politicians. The survey was ordered by the International Republican Institute (IRI) in financial support of the US International Development Agency (USAID).
The public polls were conducted among 1200 Armenian citizens over the age 18. 41% of them think that the main problem of the country is unemployment, 31% – the social-economic situation, 19% – the issue of Karabakh. Only 3% of them think that the authorities and the presidential elections are the main problem of the country. 65% think that unauthorized rallies are not acceptable as means of social compliant, 67% think that such unacceptable means are unauthorized strikes, 81% – capturing buildings and institutions. This means that the citizens advocate the “Constitutional way”. The Gallup, which periodically organizes polls in Armenia, included the issue of change of authorities in its polls in 2006, and according to their findings 67-70% of citizens said that change of authority through a revolution is not acceptable for them. In those polls the Armenian citizens said that the most important issues concerned the social problems. Answering to the question what the authorities should do first of all to have the support of the majority of the Armenian citizens 32% of them said that they should create vacancies, 22% think that the salaries and pensions should be increased, and 20% think that they should improve the social-economic conditions in the country. 33% of those citizens think that the biggest mistake of the authorities made in 2006 was failure to prevent the growth of prices, 11% – ineffective struggle against corruption and 8% – the economic problems. By the way, only 4% of those citizens think that ignoring the law is the main problem, and only 2% think that the biggest problem is law violations.
It is interesting that people think that the most important issue concerning the situation in the country, development and what the authorities should do is opening new vacancies, increasing salaries and pensions, fulfilling their promises and the problems connected with ineffective struggle against corruption, inflation, sale of strategically important enterprises, and the lack of sufficient attention by the authorities to the society. It is also strange that few people have spoken about developing democracy, developing the education and health care systems. Only 3% of them think that democracy and settlement of the Karabakh conflict are priority issues.
Answering to a question “whether the citizens of Armenia are afraid to openly express their political views” 31% of those citizens said that “most of them are afraid” and 28% of them said that “many of them are afraid”.
The Gallup has also included the ratings of 13 potential presidential candidates and the level of trust to them. After the polls the Gallup has sent their findings concerning the leaders of parties to each party correspondingly. They included only the name of those parties in their lists (the rating and the name of the party in each line). Any party and politicians can publish their ratings. In our previous publication we wrote about the findings of the polls conducted by the Gallup (October 27 – November 3) concerning the Armenian Republican Party, according to which the existing prime minister, the chairman of the ARP is in the first place. Answering to the question who they will vote for if the presidential elections took place next Sunday, 29% of the people said that they would give their votes to Serzh Sargsyan. Yesterday we tried to contact the other politicians to find out about the results the Gallup has submitted to them. By the way, the Gallup included 13 names of politicians in its lists, but we couldn’t find out all those names. Concerning the polls organized by the Gallup the head of Arthur Baghdasaryan’s Legal State party pre-election headquarter Heghine Bisharyan has said to “Aravot” newspaper that their leader’s rating is 11% and he, in fact, is in the second place. This means that the LS is satisfied with the findings of the Gallup, however they complaint only about the fact that the air time on TV channels are limited for oppositional leaders while the governmental candidate has unlimited access. We were informed by the media service of “Heritage” party headed by Raffi Hovhannisyan that according to the Gallup, their candidate is in the third place and his rating makes 9% in that line. The spokesman of National Unity party said that Artashes Geghamyan’s rating makes 7%. This means that he is in the fourth place. Despite the fact that yesterday we couldn’t establish connection with Tigran Karapetyan and Vazgen Manukyan, according to our information Tigran Karapetyan’s rating makes 5%, and Vazgen Manukyan’s rating – 4%, which is very strange. Accordingly, they are in the 5th and 6th places correspondingly. Armenian Revolutionary Federation refused to give us any information and only informed that the names of their both candidates (Vahan Hovhannisyan and Armen Rustamyan) have been included in the list. We asked Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s office about the rating of their candidate and they told us that the Gallup has not submitted anything concerning Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s rating to them. According to our information, the polls show that Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s rating is 3%. Answering to our question why the Gallup has not submitted their findings to some parties one of the representatives of the mentioned parties said, “Certainly, such organizations usually have some fluctuation and 2-3% inaccuracies, however the Gallup is a very famous American organization, which hasn’t made any mistakes almost during its existence. They can ask the Gallup why they haven’t submitted the results to Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s office. Maybe his rating is very low and for that purpose they don’t want to inform about it. These polls have been done in financial support of the United States but not by Aharon Adibekyan, who usually, as people say, draws any numbers he wants. This is a serious American organization. It is worth mentioning that the Gallup does not limit its activities with conducting polls for one time, but it usually does it for several times before finalizing its results concerning any parliamentary or presidential elections.
These lists also contained alternative answers such as “other candidate”, “I don’t know / no answer”. 1% answered for “other candidate”, 14% – “no one”, 8% – “I don’t know / no answer”. This means that 23% of them have not made a final decision yet. Accordingly, 23% is a very big number of votes and it is a huge resource for any presidential candidate to attract. In connection with this issue the activities of TV companies are very important and it is important how much time they will provide to the candidates and how open and transparent they will be, as well as what pre-election programs the candidates will have.