What Makes Ukrainians Special? — On the Cosmopolitan Globalist

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This post originally appeared on The Cosmopolitan Globalist.

WHAT MAKES UKRAINIANS SPECIAL?

The largest humanitarian distribution center in the city of Dnipro in eastern Ukraine. Photo by darvik.photography@gmail.com

MARCH 23, 2022

CHRISTINE QUIRK, NICE

Nothing, writes Christine Quirk, who has been watching Ukrainians do the hard work of figuring out how to be a democracy. We can do it, too.

If you’ve just tuned in, Ukrainians are superheroes who repel Russian invaders using tractors, Molotov cocktails, and javelin missiles. Led by a former comedian who has buoyed citizens’ spirits through live videos, consolidated NATO, and shamed the shameless in Europe, Ukrainians defend their nation with style and humor, despite overwhelming odds.

Ukrainians, for good reason, have inspired the world. But what makes them so special?

Nothing.

I have been working on democracy and governance programs in Eurasia since 2004, and in Ukraine since 2006. I’ve observed elections and worked on campaigns. As a public opinion research consultant for a variety of clients, I have watched and analyzed hundreds of focus groups over the last five years on topics ranging from the presidential election to LGBTQI rights to pension reform. I have heard ordinary people from every corner of the country describe their frustration and pride in the country’s democratic development. No matter how many grievances they have with their leaders—and they have many—that they vote in fair elections and can speak their minds freely means that Ukraine is a democracy.

It hasn’t always been that way.

In 2004 in what became the Orange Revolution, Ukrainians came to Maidan, in the center of Kyiv, to protest a rigged presidential election. Everyone thought Ukrainians were superhuman then, too. They weren’t. They were just good organizers who believed their democracy was worth fighting for.

The Orange Revolution didn’t happen by accident. It was hard work. Everyone knew the second round of the 2004 Presidential election would be rigged in favor of Viktor Yanukovich, who was the personal choice of term-limited incumbent Leonid Kuchma. Pre-election polls showed Yanukovich was unlikely to win without cheating. When the firehose of state administrative resources was directed toward ensuring a Yanukovich victory, democratic forces (the “Oranges”) stood no chance.

In preparation, throughout 2003 and 2004, Ukrainians worked with closely with the Serbian civil society group Otpor. Otpor had organized the non-violent effort to overthrow Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, a strategy that was based in part in how Poles fought against Martial Law in 1989. Using principals of non-violence laid out in influential texts such as Gene Sharp’s The Politics of Nonviolent Action, leaders of Ukrainian civil society groups like PORA! adapted the lessons to Ukraine’s context.

Activists knew they could use people’s outrage over having their vote stolen as an organizing tool. But they had a lot of work to do.

Every aspect, from the strategic to the tactical, was planned in advance. Pre-election, they had convinced rivals Victor Yushchenko and Yuliia Tymoshenko to campaign as a united front on behalf of the Oranges. Political activists worked to build behind-the-scenes support from legislators, local leaders and even a few oligarchs—those who hadn’t murdered anyone—who could be persuaded to switch sides. Domestic election monitors trained to document and report violations were deployed in every corner of the country. Lawyers strategized how to challenge the violations in the courts, knowing denied petitions would hand them a PR victory. Communications specialists were ready to keep Ukrainians informed about all the ways their votes were stolen. Grassroots organizers used clever tactics—called “softening the ground”—to reduce fear among Ukrainians by showing that a lot of people just like them were fed up too, and ready to take the risk of going to the streets in protest.

When Yanukovich was announced the winner despite election monitors’ reports of widespread fraud and exit polls that showed a clear victory by Yushchenko, the Oranges were ready to mobilize.

Despite the threat of violence, people from around the country came to Maidan. They knew that international and domestic election monitors said the election was neither free nor fair. They weren’t afraid because they saw how many others just like them were facing down police and soldiers. “They can’t shoot everyone” is an operating principle of non-violent protests. Critically, security services refused to shoot protesters, demonstrating the power of non-violence and possible sympathy within the services for the protestors’ message. Under pressure, oligarch-controlled Channel 5 switched sides to tell the truth about the stolen election. Momentum shifted and the Central Election Commission declared a do-over of the election. The compromise candidate few loved but most united behind, Viktor Yushchenko, won.

The Orange Revolution influenced Ukraine’s democratic trajectory in at least two important ways: First, it built the foundation of the civil society which is now supporting the war effort. It taught activists how to unite in broad coalitions, communicate effectively about their goals, and organize people to do the unsexy work of building a sustainable movement. Second, it gave young Ukrainians a deeply rooted sense of their ability to change a government that does not respect the will of the people.

Ukraine stagnated economically and politically in the following years. People became disillusioned with elected leaders who refused to address the issues they cared most about: a poor economy, lack of rule of law and pervasive corruption. Ukrainians hoped President Viktor Yanukovich, who had been legitimately elected in 2010, would keep his promise to sign the parliament-approved EU accession agreement. The agreement would push Ukraine to make the political and economic changes necessary to join in the future. It signalled that Ukraine wanted to take a western trajectory. Even then, a majority of Ukrainians supported it.

Under Kremlin pressure, Yanukovich refused to sign the agreement in November 2013. The country exploded in anger. The Revolution of Dignity—Ukraine’s second revolution in ten years—began.

The organizational foundation built for the Orange Revolution proved solid. The next generation of Ukrainians, who dreamt of a European future, and others who were fed up seeing different rules for the wealthy and well-connected again came to Maidan in the freezing cold. For months, volunteers provided the food, shelter and medical support that made such a large-scale urban protest possible in the middle of winter. To keep spirits up, top Ukrainian entertainers performed and priests held masses in a carnival atmosphere. Everyone knew why they were there: Ukraine’s democracy and European future was at stake.

The protest ended when Yanukovich fled to Russia, but not before snipers opened fire on a crowd of protesters, killing at least 120, and touching off violent street battles. Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa’s 2014 documentary Maidan shows the elaborate organization, the sense of common purpose, and the extraordinary violence of the Revolution of Dignity. Much will look familiar to those tuning in to Ukraine for the first time. Ukrainians punch back hard.

The Verkhovna Rada voted to oust the AWOL Yanukovich for failing to show up for work. A caretaker government was formed, which signed the EU accession agreement. Petro Poroshenko was elected with 55 percent of the vote in the May 2014 election.

In between and since the Orange Revolution and The Revolution of Dignity, Ukrainians have pressured their government to crack down on corruption. They’ve involved themselves in the boring machinery of local government by taking advantage of Ukraine’s decentralization policy, which has given local communities more control over budgets. Because of hard work of multiple NGOs that are fighting the battle against Russian disinformation from multiple angles, Ukrainians have become sophisticated consumers of online information. They vote in elections, even if they don’t like their options. It’s taken twenty years to get to this point, but the progress shows every day of this awful war.

Ukrainian democracy often takes two steps forward, one step back. But Ukrainians won’t let their authoritarian neighbor rob them of the democracy they’ve been working on for twenty years. The only thing that has surprised me over the last two weeks is that Putin didn’t know this.

When the war is over, Ukrainians will lead the effort to build democratic institutions in places like Belarus after Lukashenko and post-Putin Russia. They might even have some lessons for Americans and Europeans.

They’re not special. They’re just democrats.

Christine Quirk is public opinion research consultant who specializes in emerging and declining democracies. She has been working in Ukraine since 2006 for a variety of NGO, government and private sector clients. More information about her work and clients can be found at www.quirkglobalstrategies.com. She lives in France and tweets at @cequirk.

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Beat the Crowd and Get to Know Ukraine’s Forgotten City: Mariupol

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Haven’t heard of Mariupol? There’s a good chance you’ll hear a lot about this heavily industrialized city in Ukraine’s south in the coming weeks, for the wrong reasons.

Almost three years ago, I observed the first round of the Presidential election in Mariupol. I described the experience in this medium post.

I’ve been back there several times since to watch focus groups. A lot has has changed! The city has benefitted from more attention from Kyiv and a young mayor. There’s now a smooth, fast highway from Zaporizhiya and more regular train service. The gardens and parks around town have been spruced up. There are a couple good restaurants and a lively contemporary art scene. Focus group participants volunteer their pride in the town. It’s a pleasure to visit, and not just because I like to look at the mosaics on its abandoned yacht club.

There’s more to it than meets the eye, too. A centuries-old population of Pontic Greeks live in and around Mariupol. Indeed, there are villages on the outskirts of town that look and feel Greek. They soften Mariupol’s otherwise hard visage. Ukraine is more diverse than it gets credit for, especially around the Black Sea.

What Hasn’t Changed in Mariupol

What hasn’t changed since 2019 is Mariupol’s position 25 km from the Russian border. It’s a strategic port city on the Sea of Azov and important for Ukraine. It was occupied when Russia invaded in 2014 and its villages were shelled. Sitting on the Line of Control, it’s hard to imagine it won’t be the first major city to be overrun if/when Russians push even farther into Ukrainian territory.

Why should anyone care about the fate of a mid-sized Ukrainian city, pushed up hard against the Russian border? The biggest threat to Russia is hardly NATO expansion. Russia is threatened by the vibrant democracy on its border, defended by ordinary people like the ones I met doing tedious but critical election day work. Twice in the last two decades Ukrainians have taken to the streets to remove corrupt, undemocratic governments. They’d do it again, too. Russia compares unfavorably by every democratic measure and Putin knows it. That’s the expansion he is concerned about.

There aren’t many success stories in this region. Ukraine is one of them and it’s 100% the result of Ukrainians’ commitment to democratic governance and holding their leaders accountable.  I’ve seen survey data that say a third of Ukrainians would take up arms to defend the country against a Russian re-invasion. I don’t know if, compared to other countries, that number is high or low, if it’s enough or totally insufficient. But I believe it.

Ukrainians know how fragile their independence and their democracy is. I saw it on that election day and I hear it in every focus group. They think it’s worth defending. They’re right. Healthy Ukrainian democracy is in Europe’s and North America’s interests. It’s in Russia’s interest, too.  But if Mariupol goes down, no one — especially in Europe — should be surprised at what comes next.

Contact QGS

Quirk Global Strategies has been working in Ukraine since 2006. In the past five years, Christine Quirk has observed hundreds of focus groups on topics ranging from politics and political parties, Russian disinformation, LGBTQ rights, women in politics and human rights in every corner of the country. Contact us and we can talk to you about your research options, with or without Russian occupiers.

 

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How to Navigate a Polluted Information Environment

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One of my favorite arguments against political opinion research in autocracies has been that surveys measure little more than the degree to which state-driven propaganda has penetrated. When voters hear no opposing views in the media and political opponents are marginalized to the point of irrelevance, public opinion almost always favors the autocrat. How could it not?

Wait—wasn’t the internet supposed to have levelled the field? Weren’t social media and messaging platforms supposed to have given oppositional movements the tools to circumvent state-driven communications and reach voters directly?

That argument hasn’t been viable for at least a decade, if it ever was. Even the dumbest autocrats have proven better able exploit the opportunities presented by social media than their less well-organized and -funded opponents. As tools have become more sophisticated, they’ve evolved.

The Savvy Autocrat Uses Disinformation

The predictability of the autocratic media space has vanished. By economically strangling independent media and cultivating dependent media outlets, autocrats have more tools to influence public opinion at their disposal than they did when they dictated content to newspapers, radio and TV stations directly. The autocrat who can combine a nominally “free” but compliant media and hire savvy social media operators who understand the perverse incentives of audience engagement gets a head start.

                                                   It’s complicated

The modern autocrat now has extraordinary capacity to shape public opinion, often beneath the radar. Politically-aligned and compliant mass media outlets launder and amplify social media-driven fringe themes, targeted to receptive audiences. When they turn their attention to democratic processes and allies, the results can be devastating. Perhaps you’ve heard of “Stop the Steal.” If not, google it. It’s been in the news. It will serve as a textbook example of how to use disinformation to build public support for solutions to problems that don’t exist.

Unlike in the “old days,” the information environment in autocracies is extremely fluid. Within a country, domestic and foreign players can team up to spread mutually beneficial disinformation. Those players may have aligning, but temporary, political and economic interests; alliances can be transactional. Different messages on different topics can be micro-targeted at diverse audiences with no accountability.

Sometimes just a “firehose of BS” is all that’s needed to confuse citizens and encourage them to check out. True, false or contradictory, disinformation exhausts the audience to the point it concludes “everyone is lying, you can’t believe anything these days.”  That’s good enough for those for whom muddied waters count as a victory.

Sink or Swim in Polluted Waters

But let’s say you want to advance a policy, or shore up public support for democratic processes. In a polluted environment, understanding how the public view the issues is important, but it’s only part of the picture. You need also to understand the forces that are shaping their views. This is especially true in backsliding democracies where autocrats benefit from the confused and checked-out population they created.

Here are some key questions to answer and track. What and whose strategic objective is disinformation designed to achieve? What messages are getting traction? Where are they coming from and who are the targets? How are platforms’ punitive actions reshaping the information environment? Governments, businesses and advocacy organizations need to understand this.

“But my topic isn’t terribly controversial or political. Why should I care?” If you are operating in a politicized environment, and your agenda or company has the potential to challenge powerful economic interests, you need to fully understand not only public opinion, but also the potential forces arrayed against you. Knowing this, you can launch your advocacy campaign, voter education program or build your brand knowing in advance where the risks lie and the best way to respond.

Thinking Beyond Traditional Qual and Quant

Strategic disinformation is making the places QGS works in and the topics we work on increasingly complicated. Because we care about actionable data, we’ve been thinking a lot about how to expand the definition of “measuring public opinion” to meet these new realities. Our work on disinformation projects in Ukraine, a testing ground for techniques that are now common everywhere, has taught us a lot about which tool is best suited to answer which question. Because disinformation dynamics are different in every country, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. It’s hard to figure out!

When it comes to measuring the impact of disinformation, traditional qualitative and quantitative are not the only, or the best, tools. It’s a multifaceted problem that requires a multifaceted solution: social media mining, media monitoring, usage studies all help illuminate the sources of disinformation and determine which messages are cutting through and which can be ignored. We can combine these tools to give the fullest picture of your messy information environment.

Contact us and we can help you understand the challenge you’re facing

 

 

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An Outsider’s Guide to the US Presidential Election

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People all over the world are offering social media takes on the US Presidential election that range from gullibly wrong to dangerously misinformed. Because the stakes are so high, spreading misinformation, even accidentally, could have a serious impact on public perceptions of the legitimacy of the process. Understanding basic facts about the US system and the dynamics shaping the race will help you avoid contributing to an information stream already filled with burning garbage.

  • Polling American Elections is Hard and Most Pollsters Try to Get it Right: It’s lazy to fall back on “but the 2016 polls were wrong!” When every adult in a country is both eligible and likely to vote, random selection for election surveys is easy. Everyone qualifies for the survey. In the US, about 70% of the electorate is registered to vote and only 55%-65% of those cast a vote. Pollsters have to apply art and science to predicting the profile of likely voters. Sometimes their assumptions are wrong.

    Actually Not That Funny

    Most pollsters operate in good faith though and are transparent about their selection methodology. Find out which pollsters are hacks and learn how to interpret the good ones’ methods. Amplifying garbage polls undermines public confidence in the science as well as the outcome of the election.

 

  • It’s Not 2016, or 1968. Many of us can’t forget 2016. We should. It is not instructive for 2020. The most important difference is that Trump is a very weak incumbent. Incumbent presidents enjoy such huge advantages they are typically very hard to beat (Obama, GWB, B. Clinton). At his current numbers, however, Trump’s re-election would be ahistorical. In defiance of common sense, he is “playing the law and order card.” It’s NOTHING like when Nixon tried it in 1968. Nixon was running for an open seat against an opponent (Hubert Humphrey) who was perceived as weak on law and order! Trump IS the incumbent and also, significantly, a career criminal. Law and order is HIS responsibility and voters think he’s not been doing a great job at it. As a challenger, former VP Biden is reasonably well-liked and very well-known, differentiating him from Democratic challengers in past years (John Kerry in 2004, for example, was less well-known and more easily defined). Finally, two very unpopular, well-known candidates competed for open seat in 2016. That’s a completely different campaign dynamic. Stop saying “but 2016!”

 

  • Many Data Files Are Publicly Available for Use (and Abuse): No, really, ANYONE can go to Ohio’s secretary of state website and download the entire state’s voter file, even Russians! Michigan’s requires a simple FOIA request. Russians figured that out, so you can too. Nearly every state’s voter registration records are accessible for free or a small cost. No one needs to “hack” anything to get them. Contribution records at the Federal Election Commission are also publicly available. Most states also provide up-to-date counts of how many mail ballots have been sent out and received and so much more. Every campaign runs on these data. The flip side is that legally-obtained public data can be also used for evil purposes. Get to know the Secretaries’ of State websites and learn to tell the difference.

 

  • Look for Vote Suppression Rather Than Fraud: In the US, states and counties administer elections. There is neither a central voter database nor administrative structure. With more than 3000 counties, coordinated, large scale interference in vote counting is extremely hard to do. Voter fraud is extremely rare. Most American election administrators at the state and county levels are non-partisan and professional. However, political power is a hell of a drug. Partisan counties and states have other tools at their disposal, such as voter file purges, closure of polling places in particular neighborhoods, using security forces for intimidation or tactical COVID lockdowns that could contribute to vote suppression. Voting and election fraud is rare, hard to do at scale and easy to detect. Vote suppression is well-documented, much easier to do and harder to detect. Look for it.

 

  • There is No “Election Day” Anymore: Nearly 25% of votes were cast by mail in 2016 and it will be higher in 2020. Many Americans, like me, will receive ballots by mail in mid-September and will send them back immediately. Elections in Oregon and Washington have been entirely vote by mail (VBM) for years. Voters

    Your Ballot May Vary

    and administrators are comfortable with the process. Other states, like California, have a hybrid system (65% vote by mail). Still other states make it very hard to vote by mail. COVID has forced those states allow forms of VBM to diminish the risk of spreading the virus. Because of COVID chaos, it’s hard to know which voters will choose to VBM if they have the option. Despite the fact that VBM fraud is extremely rare, that it advantages neither party when done at scale and voters who have it love it, some forces have chosen to politicize it (while at the same time encouraging their supporters to…vote by mail). Here’s a solid guide to what’s important to understand about VBM. Don’t buy into BS.

 

  • We Won’t Know the Results on “Election Night:” We all love watching the networks “call” races as votes are counted and “precincts report” on election night. That’s not going to happen in 2020. Get over it and go to bed early. States start counting ballots on election day after polls close, but how they process mail ballots differs. It may take days or even weeks (hello, California!) to know the results. Because in-person votes may be demographically different than mail votes, we shouldn’t make any calls until mail votes are counted. Anyone, especially the President, who draws conclusions about the results before mail ballots are counted is willfully undermining the process. Don’t help him. Count the votes first, then announce results. We can wait.

 

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Watch Ukraine:elections scheduled in 2019

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With up to three elections scheduled in 2019 (presidential primary and run-off, and parliamentary ballots), Ukraine is going to be the subject of a lot of international attention in the coming months. With an unpopular president, unpopular political parties and a disillusioned, undecided electorate, the outcome of all these contests is anyone’s guess.

Read more

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Why Facebook Hurts Democratic Movements

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There are lots of things about Facebook that annoy me (mostly how it went from being a useful way to find out what your coolest friends were doing, listening to or reading to becoming an echo chamber of your most annoying friends’ scores on idiotic quizzes, but that’s a different blog post on a different blog) but the thing that bothers me most these days is all the groups and petitions devoted to “supporting” various democratic movements.

Moldova introduced itself to hundreds of thousand clicktivists earlier this year. Then there was Iran. (The online response to China’s cracking some Uighur skull has been, at best, muted, at least in my network. I suspect it’s because there aren’t as many hot girls involved). The most recent example comes from Baku, where two Azeri youth activists were beaten up by sportsmenki and tossed in jail for doing little more than having dinner at a downtown Baku restaurant.

Since this happened, I have been invited to no fewer than six groups that express support for them, but have not joined one. I feel bad about this, but the only things less effective than Azeri youth activists are the Facebook groups set up to “draw international attention” to their situation. (Harsh? I know from Azeri youth activists).  Furthermore, they fail to achieve even that amorphous goal: the tepid support most of the groups receive does little but illustrate what is already screamingly obvious — very few outside Azerbaijan care what goes on there.  And after generating all the international attention, then what?

Like Twitter, Facebook democracy support groups bug me for several reasons.

First, Facebook groups prolong the illusion held by many in opposition movements in the Former Soviet Union that democratic change can come from anywhere but inside the country.  One of the Azeri opposition’s favorite strategies for achieving power was writing lots of letters to foreign leaders, taking expensive junkets to Brussels and beseeching visiting OSCE diplomats plaintively. Really, who can blame them for wanting to spend more time in Vienna than Yevlax? However, challenging despots requires hard, risky groundwork, convincing skeptical voters in your own country that you’re responsible enough to be trusted with the reins of power and that it’s worth the risk to join you.

Second, it prolongs the illusion that organizing is as easy as clicking a button. It’s a lot more fun to organize several thousand Europeans and Americans to support your “cause” than it is to mobilize IDPs still living in train cars 14 years after the oil-rich country lost a war. It’s a lot easier to broadcast a Twitter to the universe than it is to go out and talk to people in Lenkoran who don’t have electricity, much less internet, face to face.

Third, it diminishes the stakes. If people in Azerbaijan truly want to boot the kleptocrats (and there is plenty of evidence to suggest most don’t), they have to join civil society organizations or political parties or labor unions that oppose the government. They have to volunteer to monitor elections. As a result, jobs will be lost, university places sacrificed, nights spent in jail and heads cracked. The idea that it can be done any other way is an insult to the people who have tried and succeeded (or, tried and failed).

The situation in Azerbaijan right now is terrible. It was terrible before Facebook and will continue to be terrible long after Facebook joins Friendster and MySpace in the dust-bin of social networking history. If you’re going to click, click on something like Daily Puppy or your favorite porn site. It will have about as much impact on Azerbaijan.

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Managed Democracy: Azerbaijan’s Presidential Election

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As the 2008 Presidential election in Azerbaijan approaches, I predict there will be a substantial amount of revisionism of what happened in the 2005 election. It’s not hard to do — so few people pay attention that it’s easy for regime mouthpieces to say whatever they want without anyone challenging them — and there’s plenty to gain by persuading people who only hear what they want to hear that the election was quite democratic.

Azerbaijan’s Ambassador to the U.S. wrote a letter to the NYT this week that provides good insight into the regime’s talking points. He was responding to an excellent but sort of “duh” article a few weeks back by Chris Chivers called Seeking a Path in Democracy’s Dead End.

“To clarify, President Ilham Aliyev issued two orders in 2005 calling on election officials to obey election laws and lifted a ban on public demonstrations. The government also fully supported the use of exit polls and the inking of voters’ fingers to prevent the practice of double-voting, both of which were historic firsts for the country.

Moreover, when the government learned of voting irregularities in 10 districts, it took the unprecedented step of annulling those ballots and holding new elections in those areas, as well as dismissing from their posts the officials responsible.

The road to democracy is a process, and Azerbaijan views it not as a “dead end” but as a doorway through which we step willingly.”

I watched a lot of the “process” in 2005 and democratic wasn’t the exactly the word that came to mind. I don’t doubt Ilham Aliyev twice ordered officials to obey the law (a strange command, if you think about it, since it is their job), if by “obey the law” you mean “beating people in the street,” “arresting some journalists” and “stealing a boatload of votes.” My friend’s BBC documentary “How To Start a Revolution,” has some footage of some of the more compelling examples of what passes for “law obeying” during elections in Azerbaijan.

Bragging about participating in exit polls and finger inking is pretty disingenuous, since the government consented to the inking about two weeks before the election and hired its own exit pollster to dilute the impact of the non-government sponsored exit poll. It’s impossible to administer an effective finger inking program (especially invisible ink) in such a short time and train precinct personnel in its usage, a point that I am certain was not lost on the regime. Accordingly, I saw people freely voting who had all five fingers inked on both hands. Both are very savvy moves, and indicative of little else but the government’s desire to promote the perception of a democratic process and the willingness of the West to buy into the narrative.

The “annulling ballots” part is admirable, but only a small part of the story. In an effort to purge the 2005 election in Azerbaijan from my mind, I have blocked a lot of this out, but other people remember quite well. Thanks to Vugar Godjaev for refreshing my memory.

  • Zakatala district (ConEC #110): Arif Hajiyev of the Azadliq bloc won the election. President Aliyev dismissed governor of Zakatala District Vaqif Rahimov for alleged interference in the vote. The election results were annulled.
  • Sabirabad district: Panah Huseynov of Azadliq Bloc won the election and the President dismissed the ExCom (an Excom is a presidentially appointed governor).
  • Surakhani district: Ali Karimov of Azadliq bloc won this constituency. The President dismissed the ExCom and the election results were annulled.
  • A week after Election Day, the Prosecutors Office said four election officials were detained on suspicion of falsifying balloting results and abuse of office. These election officials were from Binagadi (ConEC #9) and Sumgait (ConEC #42) constituencies, where Azadlik Bloc’s Sardar Jalaloglu and Flora Karimova respectively won the elections

These are only the most cut-and-dried examples. There were multiple other constituencies where the USAID exit poll varied from official results, but within the margin of error of the poll, so it was hard to make an assessment. There were also plenty of protocols that showed monkey business. OSCE outlines this and other problems here.

The Aliyev regime is going to be making a lot of effort this year to demonstrate to the US and European partners that Azerbaijan is “democratic and lawful.” We’ll be keeping a watch out here. We specialize in lost causes.

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Party’s Over, Georgians. Time to Go Home

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There comes a time when election protesters need to sit down and shut up. In Georgia, that time has come. Let’s look at the data:

  • A credible, pre-election poll shows the president at 46% among the likeliest voters, with projected support at 52%;
  • An exit poll that put the president’s support at 54% [though with 28% refusing to participate, the results of this poll are highly suspect];
  • Two parallel vote tabulations (PVTs) conducted by respected NGOs that put the president’s support between 50% and 53%.
  • Multiple international observation missions deem the election “broadly democratic” (although not without citing serious shortcomings).

Official results (at this point) give the president 53%. I love a good conspiracy as much as the next person and former Soviets are better than anyone at spinning them, but sane people really need to look hard at how all these disparate data points converged to tell a very clear story: Mikhail Saakashvili exceeded 50% and avoided a run-off.

Instead of wasting their supporters’ energy and anger by making them stand outside in the freezing cold for no good reason, the opposition parties (such as they are) should focus their resources on organizing around Misha’s shortcomings as a leader and creating a viable alternative. They need to be thinking about the next election now (or, rather, yesterday). Continued carping about this one diminishes their own credibility both with the Georgian electorate and the international community.

One of the biggest strategic errors of parties in this part of the world is they are always fighting the last election, and never thinking about how to win the next one.

Additionally, in advance of the parliamentary elections, they should talk to the Ukrainians about creating a partisan election monitoring program (starting NOW). They need to have a legal, PR and grassroots strategy in place that documents, challenges, quantifies and systematically publicizes election violations. Even the Azadaliq coalition in Azerbaijan managed to get part of a program in place in 2005 (a lot of good it did them, but like the Georgians, before they met with the Ukrainians their idea of challenging the election was running everyone out in the streets to get their heads beaten in by the authorities).

Although I think the Georgian opposition doesn’t have a leg to stand on, I don’t think the President’s victory celebrations should obscure two very important points. First of all, this election had some serious problems, ranging from technical problems (according to IRI’s report) to instances of intimidation, problems with voter lists, lack of access to the media and abuse of administrative resources (cited by the ODIHR/International Mission).

While I do not believe the fraud had a substantial impact on the final results, could there have been enough at the margins to push Saakashvili over the 50% threshold? Certainly. Could voters have felt too intimidated to make any other choice? Absolutely. The latter is not the kind of manipulation that can be detected by exit polls or PVTs or measured by observers, but it needs to be taken into consideration.

Secondly, if I were Saakashvili and his advisers, I’d drink my Saparavi today and start tomorrow with a cold-eyed analysis of why an incumbent President who enjoys substantial administrative advantages and an exceptionally weak opposition barely managed to get majority support. That’s embarrassing and certainly no mandate. I was amazed at how deeply Georgians were troubled by November 7th, a traumatizing event to people who thought the country was on the road to democracy. I agree. The West also needs to keep the screws turned on Saakashvili. However, with a strategic pipeline located on Georgian soil, the latter suggestion is probably wishful thinking.

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Legit Pre-Election Poll in Georgia Shows Saakashvili Up

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There’s been a spate of pre-election polls from Georgia lately, most of them not worth the paper they’re written on. All have been released by various interests to demonstrate their electoral strength and have little to no basis in reality. The only consequence of their release has been to increase public skepticism of polls.

President Mikail Saakashvili’s party (UPM) released poll a few weeks ago that was greeted with howls of derision, but for a lot of wrong reasons. Most people I talked to categorically refused to believe data publicly released by BCG National Research, the firm that polls for the president’s party (a high ranking official in the government I met insisted that’s different than the serving as president’s pollster, which suggested a bit of disingenuousness on his part, but we’ll not quibble here. Also, BCG is run by the wife of the head of the Central Election Commission, a particularly stinky connection in this part of the world). The poll showed the president with a comfortable lead. Big surprise.
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The Challenge of Exit Polls in Unstable Countries: Kenya

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Two excellent examples in the news (more or less) this week about conducting polls in unstable countries. (Tomorrow, the latest poll from Georgia).

The first was a snippet in an interesting Slate article by Alex Halperin called What’s Going on In Kenya?

Unfortunately, one bit of data has not surfaced. The International Republican Institute, a democracy-fostering nonprofit funded by the U.S. government—and despite the name, officially nonpartisan—commissioned an Election Day exit poll but has declined to release the results. Two people familiar with the results told me that they showed Odinga with a substantial lead over President Kibaki—one reported eight points, the other nine points. One has only to remember the United States’ 2004 elections to know how fallible exit polls are, but a U.S.-sponsored survey would have weight here and could have given the ECK pause before it called the election so disastrously.

Ken Flottman, an official in the IRI’s Nairobi office, said the data would serve additional purposes, such as studying voter demographics. The organization issued a statement criticizing the vote counting but does not mention its data. It missed an opportunity to advance its mission of promoting democracy and fair elections.

There’s been limited news coverage or reaction in the blogosphere so far to this except from knee-jerk reactions from people who know little about IRI’s mission or the purpose of exit polls. Furthermore, drawing conclusions about the fallibility of an exit poll in Kenya based on the 2004 election in the US or any other country, as Halperin does, is specious.

Halperin asks a fair question, though: Where’re the data?

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