Friday, September 15, 2006

Opinion Poll - and its potential impact

One should always take opinion polls with a pinch of salt but this one conducted in Serbia from the 21st - 24th July by Strategic Marketing (one of the most respected pollsters) has caused recent comment. Its part of the poll I mentioned below regarding Europe.

The usual 'how high can the Radicals go?' question reverted to the 'who is in the lead?' question which we haven't seen in Serbia for many months:

The Serbian Radical Party 36 percent
Democratic Party 31 percent
Democratic Party of Serbia 11 percent
Socialist Party of Serbia 5 percent

Parties G17, Nova Srbija, LDP (Cedo Jovanovic) follow on under the required census.

The poll is extensive and is part of the stats I gave below on the EU (hmm why are CESID and others only commenting now?) and provides interesting statistics on a number of other issues including the most pressing public concern (unemployment) and public optimism - people are predictably negative.

Conclusions? For the first time in many months, if elections were to be held tomorrow DS and DSS could form a government. That's a government without the need for hangers on, grand coalitions between parties etc. Both DS and DSS support is rising even if support for the Radical party is also in the ascendancy.

This throws a bit of a spanner in the works since senior members of the Kostunica government recently took the decision to continue with their current government until early next year. Not such an easy 'decision' to make when your coalition parties are threatening to steal the rug from under your feet. But Kostunica has a contingency plan involving bringing other parties into the government coalition to fill the gap.

The poll might put DSS in a slightly stronger negotiating position with these smaller parties - at least temporarily. After all Kostunica has less to lose than they do if he calls elections.

2 Comments:

Blogger Eric Gordy said...

The theme of a "democratic coalition" between DS and DSS is always pushed very intensively by diplomats and media. But I wonder whether this is likely to happen in the near future at all. It seems as though the part of DSS that sees its natural allies in SRS and SPS has the upper hand (and it is not clear to me that Mr Kostunica is not in this "wing" himself).

2:48 pm  
Blogger Bg anon said...

Strange, I read that Daniel Server statement today in which he said that the Radicals coming to power in Serbia wouldnt be a bad thing since if they did so then they could be blamed for losing Kosovo!

Odd statement although he did say that it was his personal opinion rather than any official position.

9:23 pm  

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