And voting on Election Day, September 30th, will be not for political forces but rather for their leaders. It is proved by the results of the Index of communication effectiveness (ICE) investigation which was held by the PRT communication group in July.
ICE was determined by evaluating of how this or that political force as a participant of future parliamentary elections presents itself to the electors, successfully or not realizes its election campaign, participates in the informational field.
Political experts, journalists, representatives of public organizations were invited to participate in this social project. As it was said by Yaroslav Hobta, the leader of the project, the biggest total index of communication effectiveness in July, even long before the official start of election campaign, belonged to the bloc “Nasha Ukraina – Narodna Samooborona” (+7.9). But the level of bloc’s communication and activity was characterized by periods of increase and decrease in this month. According to the attitude of experts, high ICE is explained by electors’ understanding of bloc’s main idea – to ban deputy immunity. High total indexes are also shown by BJT (+7) and Region Party (+5.4). Growth of communication efficiency level of BJT in the beginning of July, according to experts’ conclusion, started after increase of presence of party leader in Mass Media in a format of videos and on the air, in informational programs. BJT is positioned as the conductor of constitution referendum idea and is known to people in this quality. Nevertheless, the party-elector communication indexes started decreasing – probably, the changes brought to the contents of Constitution have not been accepted by the electorate as primary task, and there were no new ideas presented by the party bloc.
According to the total of investigation, the region party didn’t provide the electorate with new ideas – it just stopped at comparative characteristics of the outcomes of its work and the work of “orange” government. Starting at a high leader’s point, this party became not so popular in the middle of the month, which was caused by absence of Viktor Yanukovich in Ukraine and “the phosphorous question”. The total index of CPU is +1.7. The stable image of Communist Party is a positive feature, while SPU and its leader haven’t started an election campaign yet as they pay their attention mostly to supporting the work of Verkhovna Rada. The Bloc of Volodymir Litvin came up with its leader’s slogan “I am back”, but has not proposed any personal program (ICE = +2.7). According to political experts, the Bloc of Volodymir Litvin will seek for support of the disappointed ones but not of the centrists (like it was in 2006) during these elections.
As it was announced by Vadim Karasev, the director of the Institute of Global Researches, the results of the ICE project practically coincide with the recent sociologic polls. Small political parties are the most active now, while the powerful political forces are waiting for the final of election race. And as Vitaly Bala, the director of Situation modeling Agency, shred his opinion, these early parliament elections won’t force as many people to vote as it was in 2006; all political parties will gain less votes than they managed to last year. It is explained by the disappointment of electorate because of political elite failure – people have already refused t accept negative information and critics, they rush for solving their own pressing problems.
Alexandra Kucheryavaya
