Exit Polls Abroad
Since Alexander Lukashenka banned exit polls in Belarus, and since the official votes are massively falsified and no one even counted the ballots, there’s no way to know how people of Belarus actually voted on March 19.
Well. Except for exit polls abroad, at the embassies. You can get a general picture of the scale of falsification by comparing official data from the Belarusan embassy in Czech Republic and the results of the exit poll:
| Official | Exit poll |
|---|---|
| Hajdukevich - 2 Kazulin - 1 Lukashenka - 156 Milinkevich - 92 invalid ballot - 1 |
Hajdukevich - 1 Kazulin - 8 Lukashenka - 9 Milinkevich - 103 Against all - 6 Refused to answer - 30 |
The polling took place throughout the whole day from the opening of the embassy until closing. Even if we assume that during “early voting” there were additional 102 people (doubtful) and all of them voted for Lukashenka (very-very doubtful), still he could only get a theoretical maximum of 111 votes, not 156.
The official numbers have nothing in common with how people actually voted.
March 23rd, 2006 at 12:23 pm
Even more doubtful than anything stated above is the assumption than citizen living abroad would show the same electoral behaviour as the majority living in Belarus; completely neglecting the effect of the official information policy is a ridiculous approach of counter-propaganda.
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:14 pm
Conrad: I did not make any such claims about it being “representative” anywhere. The point here is that the official results have nothing to do with actual votes, at least in our embassy.
March 23rd, 2006 at 5:58 pm
Embassy in NYC also falsified the results.
Exit poll results:
Hajdukevicz – 0
Kazulin – 10
Lukaszenka – 25
Milinkevicz – 84
Against all – 6 (+1, that wrote in “Pazniak”).
Refused to answer – 49
Official numbers:
Hajdukevicz – 2
Kazulin – 8
Lukaszenka – 158
Milinkevicz - 53
Against all – 7
Invalid bulletins - 7
(data taken from http://wolny.livejournal.com/228243.html )
March 23rd, 2006 at 7:51 pm
How did you get the official results from the embassies? In 2004 an exit poll of the referendum and parliamentary elections was conducted at the Belarusian embassy in Sweden, but the official figures were then kept secret in Minsk.
On Radio Liberty’s website I read an interesting article about the Levada Centre’s telephone poll conducted on election day in Belarus. Although my Belarusian is a bit weak, I gathered that 30 percent of respondents had refused to answer. 20 percent said they voted for Milinkevich and 33 percent for Lukashenko.
Do you trust these figures, and would you agree that it is plausible that most people who refused to answer voted for a candidate other than Lukashenko? If so, the real results could be rather even between Milinkevich and Lukashenko, or at least betwen Milinkevich plus Kozulin on one hand and Lukashenko on the other hand.
Regards,
Tobias Ljungvall
PS. Thanks for that document you sent me.
March 23rd, 2006 at 8:26 pm
Hi Tobias:
> How did you get the official results from the embassies?
I don’t know. Some of my friends took part in this project, but I don’t know the details.
I have a file with exit polls results from 5-6 locations (Brussels, NYC, DC, Warsaw, Prague,…).
Actually, in most embassies they refused to reveal the data (I wonder if they were breaking the law by hiding the results?)
> Although my Belarusian is a bit weak, I gathered that 30 percent of respondents had refused to answer. 20 percent said they voted for Milinkevich and 33 percent for Lukashenko.
You got it a bit wrong.
30 percent refused to answer. But among those who AGREED to answer, the results were:
47% - Lukashenka
30% - Milinkevich
March 23rd, 2006 at 10:06 pm
I think we both got it right, actually. The question is whether we want to speculate about how the unknown 30 percent voted. I think we should.
Here is part of the Radio Liberty article:
Магчыма, у апытаньні “Лявада-цэнтру” траціна апытаных адказала, што прагаласавала за Лукашэнку, 20% – што прагаласавалі за Мілінкевіча, 30%, як паведаміў спадар Гражданкін, адмовіліся адказваць, які выбар яны зрабілі. Калі гэтыя 30% адкінуць, то 33% за Лукашэнку як раз і ператвараюцца ў 47%, а 20% за Мілінкевіча – у 30%. Але гэтае адкіданьне сапраўды некарэктнае – гэтыя 30%, што адмовіліся адказваць – гэта “чорная скрыня”, калі усе яны былі за Лукашэнку, то ён атрымаў за 60%, калі скажам, усе за Мілінкевіча, то ён атрымаў 50%, Але як насамрэч разьмеркаваліся галасы, хто адмовіўся адказваць, невядома. Менавіта пра гэтую няпэўнасьць, відаць, і казаў намесьнік кіраўніка “Лявада-цэнтру”.
Source: http://www.svaboda.org/articlesfeatures/politics/2006/3/888C6F0B-49D1-4C55-A46F-48D3880E4BDF.html
It seems to me that Yuri Drakakhrust, who wrote the article, may be thinking along the same lines as I am.
As for the embassy voting in 2004, we tried to get the official figures from Minsk and not from the embassy. The latter distributed a result (which corresponded well enough to our polling result) to an emigré Russian website in Sweden, but there was no way of checking whether those same figures were reported to or used in Minsk.
/Tobias
March 25th, 2006 at 6:41 pm
bastards, they (in ambassy) are always smiling and nice, but probably very likes to live in Prague, too much.
August 13th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you down the road!