Latvians disappointed with all political parties, including the opposition

The May opinion poll on how people would vote now, from Latvijas Fakti:

Harmony Centre 10.4%
Farmers and Greens 6%
People's Party 5.5%
Latvia First Party/Latvia's Way (LPP/LC) 5.1%
Civic Union (Kalniete and Kristovskis) 4.3%
For Human Rights in United Latvia 3.6%
New Era Party 3.6%
Štokenbergs-Pabriks party 3.5%
Fatherland and Freedom/LNNK 2.9%
---------------
total for all parties 52%
undecided or would not vote 48%

The coalition remains unpopular, as it has been for at least a year. Two months ago, it looked like the newly founded Kalniete-Kristovskis and Štokenbergs-Pabriks parties might gain support. But, now, they are losing voters as well. Apparently, not too many people share my enthusiasm for the Civic Union. And supporting the popular referendum for increase in retirement benefits has not helped Štokenbergs' and Pabriks' popularity much.

At some point, some political movement will be able to earn the trust of Latvian voters. But I really don't know how, what type of political movement or how many years in the future that will be...

Opinion poll numbers

New opinion poll from Latvijas Fakti about how people would vote if elections were now. For first time, they have included the two new parties that are forming now: one consisting of New Era defectors (lead by Sandra Kalniete) and the group that left Fatherland and Freedom a few days later (lead by Ģirts Valdis Kristovskis) and another lead by People's Party's defectors Aigars Štokenbergs and Artis Pabriks.

The numbers are:

Harmony Centre 9%
Farmers and Greens 6.7%
Kalniete - Kristovskis party 6.4%
People's Party 6%
PCTVL 5%
LPP/LC 4.6%
Štokenbergs - Pabriks party 3.7%
New Era Party 3.6%
Fatherland and Freedom 2.5%
-----------------------------
undecided or would not vote 46%

The conclusions:

1. Compared to the previous poll, the biggest loser is opposition's New Era. Kalniete and other former popular ex-New Era people are starting a new party and the former New Era voters are gone to them.
2. The coalition parties remain unpopular but not more than two months ago. The huge undecided/would not vote segment is still there. The new parties have convinced the former New Era voters but not much of the rest of the country.
   
3. The undecided voters will probably vote for someone. It's impossible to predict whom. But the next parliament will be quite different from the current one.

Even though the numbers will change a lot until the election, I translated them into seats in the parliament:

Coalition: 39
Farmers and Greens 15
People's Party 14
LPP/LC 10

Opposition - ethnically Russian: 31
Harmony Centre 20
PCTVL 11

Opposition - ethnically Latvian: 30
Kalniete - Kristovskis 14
New Era Party 8
Štokenbergs - Pabriks 8

For all of post-independence Latvia, the Russian parties have been left in the opposition. With those numbers, it's hard to think of a stable government without the Harmony Centre, the biggest and the more moderate of the two ethnically Russian parties that we have.

More numbers!

Opinion poll numbers, this time. The voting intentions of Latvians, according to Latvijas Fakti:

Saskanas Centrs (Harmony Centre) 10.8%
Jaunais Laiks (New Era) 7.8%
ZZS (Farmers and Greens) 6.2%
Tautas Partija (People's Party) 5.1%
PCTVL 4.5%

The most telling is this comparison:

all parties combined 48.8%
"would not vote" or "undecided/none of the above" 51.2%

One of our pollsters noted that we have not seen as big percentage of undecided voters since 1995. Back then, the main Latvian bank (Banka Baltija) was bankcrupt, people's savings were gone and country's economy was still in shambles after a difficult post-Soviet transition.

Right now... people's everyday lives are fine, the economy is great in short term (I have my doubts about medium/long term perspectives and I've written about those in detail on this blog... but the possible problems are not showing up in everyday life yet). Yet, the political elite looks progressively dysfunctional... and it's not like the opposition looks much better than the coalition, either (click here for the latest example of that).

In a weird way, it looks like what US is going through... people are fine themselves but a lot of them don't trust any side of the political divide... neither Bush nor Democrats.

Making fun of the president

There are quite a few parody websites making fun of the new Latvian president Valdis Zatlers:

zatlers.blogspot.com
www.zatlers.lv
www.valdiszatlers.com

"Zatlers blog" on blogspot was the first one that cropped up, the next day after Valdis Zatlers was nominated as a candidate for being the Latvian president. The people running it managed to pass it off as "Zatlers' official campaign website" to several newspapers, before the journalists realized it was a parody.

It has grown more and more intricate since then. The blog now purports to detail the life of a fictional character, "Zaldis Vatlers" who is "the chief resident of Latvia". And it's supposedly run by "Vatlera Draugu Kopa (VDK)" which translates to "Vatlers' Group of Friends" but, most importantly, abbreviates to VDK... which is also the Latvian abbreviation for KGB. The site is non-sensical but funny... those who know Latvian can go and read it.

It's quite a change from our past president, Vaira Vike-Freiberga. She was an authority figure who was almost always right. VVF was to be worshipped, rather than made fun of. Zatlers looks different:


Zatlers has his flows. His scandal with gifts that he received as a doctor. The scandal has died out by now and opinion polls say that only 17% of Latvians have a negative opinion of Zatlers. The remaining 83% either approve of him or are going to wait and see how he turns out as the president. Nevertheless, I doubt he will ever become Vike-Freiberga-like "moral authority" figure. Zatlers will be like most of our politicians - to be made fun of, even if he ends up being relatively popular.

Opinion poll

The Latvian president is elected by the parliament, but the public opinion can have an effect on how the parliament votes. Latvijas Fakti asked 500 Latvians, whom do they support for president?
54.3% Aivars Endzins
28.6% Valdis Zatlers
Among Latvian webloggers, it's even much more skewed towards Endzins. Peteris, Aleks and a lot of Latvian language webloggers support Endzins and I have difficulty finding any pro-Zatlers voices.

Final opinion poll

From Latvijas Fakti, polling conducted on October 2-4, change compared to the previous week:
Tautas Partija 13.7% (+1.1)
ZZS 12.4% (+0.1)
Jaunais Laiks 9.5% (+2.4)
PCTVL 9.4% (+0.8)
Saskanas Centrs 8.9% (+3.2)
LPP/LC 6.8% (+0.9)
TB/LNNK 5.1% (-0.7)
Social Democrats 3.9% (+0.4)

Social Democrats are almost exactly on the 5% borderline. (3.9% of all polled people corresponds to 5% of those who have chosen a party to vote for.)
Projected seats in the parliament:
Tautas Partija 20 (-2)
ZZS 18 (-3)
Jaunais Laiks 14 (+2)
PCTVL 13 (-2)
Saskanas Centrs 13 (+3)
LPP/LC 10 (unch.)
TB/LNNK 7 (-3)
Social Democrats 5 (+5)

Looks like four more years of divided parliament, with at least three different government coalitions in this time. As it has been since the independence.

Two new opinion polls

Latvijas Fakti poll from September 23 to 26 (the number in brackets is the change compared to last week):
Tautas Partija 12.6% (-0.7%)
ZZS 12.3% (+0.2%)
PCTVL 8.8% (-0.4%)
Jaunais Laiks 7.1% (-1.0%)
LPP/LC 5.9% (-0.4%)
TB/LNNK 5.8% (unch.)
Saskanas Centrs 5.7% (unch.)
Social Democrats 3.5% (+0.2%)

Projected seats in the parliament:
Tautas Partija 22 (unch.)
ZZS 21 (+1)
PCTVL 15 (unch.)
Jaunais Laiks 12 (-3)
LPP/LC 10 (unch.)
TB/LNNK 10 (+1)
Saskanas Centrs 10 (+1)

Jaunais Laiks decline is now completely confirmed. And a poll by the competing company, SKDS. (Unofficial numbers, leaked to media. Have nonsense allegations by Dzimtene had so much effect on polling companies?)
ZZS 14.8% (+3.6%)
Jaunais Laiks 9.5% (-2.5%)
Tautas Partija 9.5% (+0.6%)
PCTVL 8.1% (-1.2%)
TB/LNNK 5% (-1.0%)
Saskanas Centrs 3.8% (+1.3%)
Social Democrats 3.5% (-0.3%)
LPP/LC 3.1% (-0.4%)

September opinion poll

My previous post on August opinion poll attracted some interesting comments from a professional survey statistician. Briefly, 9.5% in an opinion poll which polls 1000 people corresponds to a confidence interval [7.7%, 11.3%]. As a result, 1.3% change in Jaunais Laiks rating (from 10.8% in July to 9.5% in August) is not statistically significant to make any conclusions, although 2.2% drop from June to August might have been significant enough.

Meanwhile, Latvijas Fakti have released their September poll. Jaunais Laiks has dropped a little bit more, which confirms that the drop in August poll was not a statistical error. The numbers are:
Tautas Partija 13.3% (+3.5%)
ZZS 12.1% (+0.6%)
PCTVL 9.2% (-1.2%)
Jaunais Laiks 9.2% (-0.3%)
LPP/LC 6.3% (+1.2%)
TB/LNNK 5.8% (-0.8%)
Saskanas Centrs 5.7% (+1.0%)
Social Democrats 3.3% (-0.5%)

Projected seats in the parliament:
Tautas Partija 22 (+6)
ZZS 20 (+1)
PCTVL 15 (-2)
Jaunais Laiks 15 (unchanged)
LPP/LC 10 (+2)
TB/LNNK 9 (-2)
Saskanas Centrs 9 (+1)
Social Democrats 0 (-6)

The change is compared to August poll.

For the first time, the current minority government (TP+ZZS+LPP/LC) is projected to win more than a half of seats (52 out of 100), contrary to the Eastern European trend of voting out the government at every election. But I still think that "let's vote this corrupt government out" mood is going to prevail, once again. But who is going to benefit from it? Jaunais Laiks is no longer the anti-corruption outsider party and Social Democrats have their share of scandals from 2001-2005 Riga city government. Senior Citizen Party? They are still at 1.4% in the opinion poll but who knows...

August opinion poll comments

First, the numbers are unofficial. Latvijas Fakti decided not to release them. This has some bizarre pre-history. A few weeks ago, Dzimtene party claimed that their true popularity is about 10 times higher than in Latvijas Fakti polls (11% instead of 1.2%) and asked the Latvian anti-corruption office to investigate Latvijas Fakti. Dzimtene is a moderately obscure party which recently attracted attention by nominating Vadim Putin (who has similar name but is not related to Russian president Vladimir Putin) as a candidate to Latvian parliament. That smelled like a publicity stunt and Dzimtene's claim about opinions polls being wrong has a similar smell. Some of people involved in Dzimtene have a history of such stunts and there is nothing surprising here. Nothing, except for the reaction of Latvijas Fakti. They said they are tired of people questioning their polls and decided not to release the most recent poll. (I wonder if that means that some more influential party is unhappy as well... Dzimtene is too obscure to merit such strong reaction.) Their decision was a pity because I respect Latvijas Fakti and their numbers. But, a few days later, newspapers got hold of the numbers and, now, everyone knows them.

Second, the big story is Jaunais Laiks (New Era) falling from the first place in July to the fourth place in August. Neatkariga Rita Avize (NRA), a newspaper hostile to New Era, credits the fall to their publication of transcripts of phone conversations between a businessmen who was being investigated by the tax service and senior New Era members. The businessmen was seeking for a help against the investigation and he was getting somewhat symphatetic response from New Era people. New Era Party has the same opinion about the reasons why they fall to the fourth place in the opinion poll, except that they call it as a "smear campaign by NRA".

I think they both may be reading too much into a small change in polls. New Era numbers have declined only by 1.3%. For a poll of 1000 people, that's 13 people and the probability of polling company accidentially choosing 13 less supporters of New Era this time is not the small. According to a calculation by this blogger, the probability of such event is 5-10%, meaning that New Era numbers would get underestimated by 1.3% once every 10-20 months. As long as there isn't another opinion poll confirming the change, it may just be random noise in data.

August opinion poll

From Latvijas Fakti polling agency, via today's Diena newspaper.

ZZS 11.5% (+1.1%)
PCTVL 10.4% (unch.)
Tautas Partija 9.8% (+0.9%)
Jaunais Laiks 9.5% (-1.3%)
TB/LNNK 6.6% (-1.4%)
LPP/LC 4.9% (-0.2%)
Saskanas Centrs 4.7% (-0.6%)
Social Democrats 3.8% (+0.7%)

Projected seats in the parliament:
ZZS 19 (+2)
PCTVL 17 (-1)
Tautas Partija 16 (+1)
Jaunais Laiks 15 (-4)
TB/LNNK 11 (-3)
LPP/LC 8 (unch.)
Saskanas Centrs 8 (-1)
Social Democrats 6 (+6)

The previous poll is here. There are some interesting events surrounding the current poll (the numbers are unofficial because the polling company refused to release them!). More on that in a few days.

July opinion poll

From "Latvijas fakti". The headline: The popularity of all [major] parties slightly down. The numbers (and the change compared to June opinion poll):

Jaunais laiks 10.8% (-0.9%)
PCTVL 10.4% (-0.2%)
ZZS 9.8% (-0.9%)
Tautas Partija 9% (-1.1%)
TB/LNNK 8% (-0.2%)
Saskanas Centrs 5.3% (-0.5%)
LC/LPP 5.1% (-0.4%)

This translates to the following numbers of seats in parliament:
Jaunais laiks 19 (unchanged)
PCTVL 18 (+1)
ZZS 17 (unchanged)
Tautas Partija 15 (-1)
TB/LNNK 14 (+1)
Saskanas Centrs 9 (unchanged)
LC/LPP 8 (-1)

Almost nothing has changed.

June opinion poll

According to Latvijas Fakti:

Jaunais laiks 11.7% (+1%)
ZZS 10.7% (+0.2%)
PCTVL 10.6% (+0.9%)
TP 10.1% (-0.2%)
TB/LNNK 8.2% (+0.3%)
Saskanas centrs 5.8% (+0.7%)
LC/LPP 5.5% (+1.7%)
Social Democrats 3.5% (+0.1%)

This translates to the following number of seats in the parliament:
Jaunais laiks 19
ZZS 17
PCTVL 17
TP 16
TB/LNNK 13
Saskanas Centrs 9
LC/LPP 9

Social Democrats are slightly short of 5% threshold. (Since the poll includes people who are undecided or will skip the election, 3.5% actually means 4.9% of those who have decided to vote for one of parties.)

Last month's poll is here.

May opinion poll

"Latvijas fakti" opinion poll for the month of May:
Jaunais Laiks 10.7%
Zalo un Zemnieku Savieniba (ZZS) 10.5%
Tautas Partija (TP) 10.3%
PCTVL 9.7%
Tevzemei un Brivibai/LNNK 7.9%
Saskanas Centrs 5.1%
Latvijas Cels/Pirma Partija 3.8%
Social Democrats 3.4%

This would translate to following numbers of seats in Parliament:
Jaunais Laiks 17
ZZS 17
TP 17
PCTVL 16
Tevzemei un Brivibai/LNNK 13
Saskanas Centrs 8
LC/LPP 6
Social Democrats 6

Disclaimer: Polls are provided for entertainment purposes only. The popularity of political parties may change significantly between now and the upcoming election in October 2006.