The Race Without Favorites

The election year is getting closer to its first half and it is more and more obvious that the main issue - the election of the Serbian president and the distribution of the parliamentary seats - will be accomplished in the second half. As usually happens in similar occasions, various candidates are being publicly promoted and various estimates are being published about the potential candidates for the presidential office, while the question of the parliamentary elections is in the background. If the current president does not express his intention to win the third mandate, which he is not entitled to based on the valid Constitution, presidential elections are of greater importance to him personally than for the electorate. As the potential president of the federation he already has one opponent - Montenegro - and with the president of Serbia from outside of his circles, he would not hold significant power. Bearing all this in mind since the beginning of the year, the Information Agency IPRESS analized the attitude of Serbia’s eligable voters on the election of the new president of Serbia with the goal of revealing the electoral favorite..

For public opinion researchers and analysts who respect the polls of public opinion, when it comes to the choice of leaders such as in our case, the open questions are of the uttermost importance, so that the pollees themselves can name the candidate for whom they would vote. Taking this into account, at the end of April (from the 21st through the 25th) IPRESS asked the citizens of Serbia the following question: Since this is the year of the Serbian presidental elections and since various candidates are already being mentioned, who in your opinion the best person for that office? The sample consisted of 1017 pollees from nineteen Serbian cities who agreed to answer.

Politicians’ Ratings

(Open Question %)

April, 1997

1. Vojislav Seselj 12.39

2. Nebojsa Covic 9.73

3. Vuk Draskovic 8.85

4. Vojislav Kostunica 7.08

5. Milan Panic 6.19

6. Slobodan Milosevic4.42

7. Zoran Djindjic 2.65

8. Zeljko Simic 1.77

9. Bogoljub Karic 0.88

10. Somebody else 12.41

11. Will not vote 9.93

12. No answer 23.70

The high rating of Vuk Draskovic and the low rating of Zoran Djindjic, if compared to the five previous polls conducted in 1997, comes from the belief of the electorate that Djindjic wants to dodge the agreement within Coalition Zajedno. The current impression is that it would be better for all Zajedno partners to part now, than to do so right before the elections. The considerably low rating of Slobodan Milosevic in this open list certainly results from the fact that he is not entitled for the third mandate according to the valid Constitution among other things, so the pollees did not consider him as a possible candidate for the president of the republic.

When the instrument of this kind is projected this way, however, with no variations offered, it must be said that the voters at the voting stations are faced with the ballots containing names of the presidential candidates which often does not include the name the voter would actually select. The names of 22 different candidates which emerged from the answers to the open question prove this point.

Presidential Candidates’ Ratings

Serbia

April, 1997

(%)

1. Vojislav Seselj 21.82

2. Nebojsa Covic 14.55

3. Vojislav Kostunica 10.45

4. Vuk Draskovic 9.55

5-6. Zoran Djindjic 6.82

5-6. Milan Panic 6.82

7. Milorad Vucelic 3.73

8. Zoran Lilic 3.64

9. Bogoljub Karic 3.18

10. Dragan Tomic (The Serbian Parliament) 1.36

11. Somebody else 1.82

12. No answer 4.76

13 Will not vote 11.50

The projected sample for all research was created on the basis of the telephone directory of the Serbian Telephone and Telegraph Company, which reflects essential demographic features of eligible voters in the republic: 48.98 percent are men and 51.02 percent are women, 50.8 are from the urban areas and 49.2 from the rural ones.

It is IPRESS’s practice to create stratification when conducting polls of this kind, so that the results of the presidential candidates’ rating are simultaneously obtained from Belgrade:

Presidential Candidates’ Ratings

Belgrade

April, 1997

(%)

1. Nebojsa Covic 33.93

2. Zoran Djindjic 14.29

3. Vuk Draskovic 10.71

4. Vojislav Kostunica 7.14

5-6. Vojislav Seselj 5.36

5-6. Milan Panic 5.36

7. Milorad Vucelic 3.93

8. Bogoljub Karic 3.57

9. Zoran Lilic 1.79

10. Dragan Tomic (The Serbian Parliament) 0.00

11. Somebody else 3.57

12. No answer 1.78

13. Will not vote 8.57

The excellent rating of Nebojsa Covic in Belgrade as the presidential candidate is the result of his recent position of mayor. For instance, throughout the entire 1996 he was better rated than Slobodan Milosevic, Djindjic and also Seselj, which is illustrated by the chart (in 1996 the most popular personality in Belgrade was Covic).

The low rating of Vojisalv Seselj on the Belgrade’s political battleground, and on the contrary, his high rating on the Serbian level, shows that the popularity of the SRS’s leader is based on his personal characteristics, because in the country’s interior, which is to the greatest part homogenous, the leader is sought while the population of Belgrade follows the parties and their achievements.

As for the choice of the president of the republic, the crucial factor is also the party’s support of its candidate. This point of the pre-election party’s support is crucial also because some leaders of the ruling SPS believe that any of their candidates will in any case be the favorite due to the support of their party’s membership and the sympathetic part of the electorate. Taking this into account, we asked the citizens of Serbia: For which party’s or coalition’s candidate would you vote in the elections for the president of Serbia? The results are as follows:

Whose candidate would you vote for in the elections for the president of Serbia?

April, 1997

1. Candidate of Coalition Zajedno 23.89

2. Candidate of SRS 11.51

3. Candidate of the left parties (SPS, JUL) 10.61

4. Candidate of DSS 8.85

5. Candidate of the group of citizens 6.19

6. Will not vote (abstaining votes) 13.27

7. Can not decide and no answer 25.68

If compared with all the other tables, the previous table shows that for the election of the president of Serbia, the candidate is more important than the party which supports him; supporting this statement is also the fact that the Serbian electorate is, as already mentioned before, mostly homogenous, which means it identifies with political leaders while the programs of the parties and their achievements are in the background when making political choices.

Searching for the most promising presidential candidate, IPRESS has created the popularity trend of the potential candidates for the presidential office at Andricev Venac. This popularity trend is based on the five elements located in approximately equal time intervals (January - April 1997). On the basis of the popularity trend, with the last series from April 26th, the upward trend is present for: Vuk Draskovic (1.172143), then Milan Panic (0.431429), Vojislav Seselj (0.396429) and Zoran Lilic (0.070714), while the popularity of all the other candidates is decreasing. The greatest decrease is present in the popularity of Zoran Djindjic (2.941429) and Nebojsa Covic (1.798571), while Vojislav Kostunica (1.067857) holds third place. What is the possible meaning of those results? The results have confirmed that the friction and schisms in Coalition Zajedno as the more positive participant who immediately nominated Vuk Draskovic, whose popularity rating in the last few years is quite low, have thrown out Vuk Draskovic. The weak popularity of Vuk Draskovic is illustrated by the fact that he has the lowest mark for political consistency (only 1.5 in the scale from 1 to 12), which means that he often switches his political attitude due to his emotional reactions; his wife’s performance also worsens his position, since she is doing more harm than good to her husband. In general, Vuk Draskovic has a negative media presentation (most of the media present him in the negative context). However, for his currently greatest increasing trend Vuk Draskovic has to thank the cheering quality of the Serbian electorate, because the Serbian public experiences him as the eternal looser, therefore the electorate is beginning to move toward his side. It should also be said that throughout the five observed series Vuk has the lowest standard deviation of all candidates (1.172143), while Zoran Djindjic (18.5317) has the highest standard deviation. The highest standard deviation of Zoran Djindjic shows that Belgrade’s mayor hasn’t yet announced his attitude on the question of the presidential candidate, the attitude of Coalition Zajedno as well as the attitude of the Democratic Party. On the basis of public opinion polls, except for the poll from April, it is obvious that Djindjic has been a considerably more popular personality than Vuk Draskovic. However, the hesitation to nominate himself and the variations in the attitude of his party about the question of Coalition Zajedno have caused a considerable decrease of his popularity.

The decreasing popularity trend of the until now well-rated Nebojsa Covic shows that the former mayor has not formed his political profile and presentation yet and that he is short of party support; also there is his much- delayed and at times, hesitant appearance on the political arena, which explains the high standard deviation of his popularity of 8.6007.

The advantages of Nebojsa Covic are his age (he is the youngest candidate), his political consistency (in the scale of political consistency with twelve points, the values from 1 to 4 mean low political consistency, from 5 to 9 average political consistency and from 9 to 12 full political consistency) and he holds the first position with his average rating in the last four months. Covic brings the surprise of the dissident success, since no one of the cased-out socialists has ever been resurrected as a successful politician.

The second candidate who may win 20% of votes in the second round of the presidential elections is Vojislav Seselj. His popularity trend is on increase, he is one of the younger candidates and his average popularity is around 16% of votes. However, Seselj is in the most of the media, especially the opposition ones, presented in the negative context (in the media he is mostly identified by the voters in the negative sphere) and he has a low political consistency rating.

The third candidate who may seriously get involved in the pre-election race is Zoran Djindjic, under the condition that he informs the electorate of his candidacy in time - suspense is not on his side. Djindjic is also one the younger candidates and he will have the strong support of his party in the presidential promotion, but like the others he also has some evident disadvantages: notable political inconsistency, negative presentation by the most of the press and a negative popularity trend.

According to the results of the public opinion poll, the fourth serious candidate is Vojislav Kostunica who out of all of the political leaders, except Covic who has no party to back him, has expressed a high level of political consistency. He is even highly respected among the Serbs in multinational environments, which may attract moderate national choice of the voters from the SPS and SRS camps. Kostunica’s disadvantages for the moment are mostly of the organizational character. Because his party is stricken by disputes, DSS has no permanent and satisfactory sources of funds, and the popularity trend of the party is decreasing.

Vuk Draskovic is the candidate who has much to highlight in his presentation in order to join the top four candidates, above all to seriously work on shaping his marketing presentation because the current trend of the increase in his popularity is promising. The serious obstacles are the hot-tempered and non-political (emotional) performances both his and his wife, disturbances in his party and his overall more negative than positive image created by the media. His support of the monarchy is not accepted with approval from the majority of the electorate (49.65 of the electorate supports republic, while only 12.06 supports monarchy) and he holds the last place in the public opinion of Serbia with his political consistency.

About Milan Panic, it may be said that he has already succeeded once to win over million votes in the presidential races, but today his greatest advantage is his money. This trump card is, however, in this situation of the overall poverty more negative than positive. The same goes for Bogoljub Karic who as the presidential candidate first of all has to explain the origins of his wealth, and then spend his money to attract the voters who consider that the new tycoons are only nice stories void of serious substance.

The extremely low ratings of Zoran Lilic and Milorad Vucelic are also noticeable; however, the better rating of Vucelic - who until April was not in the media at all, as opposed to the frequent presence of Lilic - opens up considerable chances for Vucelic, the experienced media expert who also holds high office in the SPS and can play an important role in the presidential race. Finally, it should be said that without Slobodan Milosevic, SPS has no serious candidate for the position of president of Serbia for the time being.