Monthly Archives: April 2010

Dashboard News [Update]: April MVK [and Polis] follows FOCUS on coalition drop and opposition rise.

[A quick note.  Rather than write a new post, I have simply updated Wednesday’s post with results from Polis.  This was easy to do because the Polis results were largely consistent with the others.  Unfortunately this doesn’t mean we have the answers to the key questions:  how do poll numbers translate into votes, and, in particular, what will happen with will the parties around the 5% threshold.  But if it weren’t for these there would be too little suspense.]

When two [three] different polls agree on shifts in most parties it is time to pay attention. The April poll for FOCUS came out last week and this week MVK [and Polis] revealed [their] own (always, to my regret and frustration, with less information than that provided by FOCUS). The movements in both of these polls correspond quite closely, even if they begin from different baselines: Smer, HZDS and KDH down, SaS up, others moving in different directions but not by much. The overall movement of coalition and opposition also agrees fairly closely, with the coalition dropping to some of its lowest levels since the coalition took office almost four years ago, though still likely ahead (despite headlines that “the opposition has caught up to Fico,” it is probably not that simple and it is the small details and narrow margins that will make the difference in what kinds of governments are viable after the election.

As always the numbers are on the Dashboard. The analysis is below:

Both MVK and FOCUS [and Polis] show an almost identical drop for Smer of about 2.5 points from February to April (and with FOCUS the March numbers are not far out of line with that trend). Because MVK begins with a lower baseline, it shows a lower result—35.1–which is in line with MVK’s overall lower result for Smer.  [Polis is between the two at  36.2].  Nevertheless the number is still striking because it is the lowest preference that Smer has received on an MVK poll since the just before the 2006 election (The FOCUS numbers from last week are low by FOCUS averages as well—the third lowest since 2007) [For Polis we do not have such a long baseline of results.].  Why so low? Probably a certain amount of fatigue, accumulation of scandals and problems and, I suspect, a bit of defection to SaS and, this month, to SNS.

FOCUS showed a big jump for SNS in April. MVK also shows a jump, though smaller in magnitude and from a smaller baseline [Polis shows no jump at all and a figure just at the threshold of viability.  SNS has usually polled low in Polis polls, however, so this needs to be taken with some caution]. [The FOCUS and MVK results] puts SNS more safely above the threshold in both of these major polls. How safe is anyone’s guess. It is hard to know how to think about this party’s chances. It’s past levels suggest that it has a decent level of residual support (if not strong organization) and I have been slightly surprised by its low but the years of scandal and extreme behavior by the party leader certainly have pushed it toward the low edge of viablility.

For HZDS the last two months show a drop in both FOCUS and MVK to just above the threshold of viability. [In the Polis poll, the party’s results are stable, but from an already quite low baseline, well below 4%.]  Of course it has been at that level on and off for the last year, and the overall trend has been quite consistently downward. The question is whether that downward trend will overcome the party’s fairly loyal voter base. This one will be close.  [News about Polis polls, whether or not they are accurate, certainly cannot help the party’s chances for persuading voters to choose it over another alternative].

The current coalition shows slightly different patterns in FOCUS and MVK: in MVK the pattern is one of clear decline from the mid-50’s to the mid-40’s.  In FOCUS polls, the drop is much smaller: from mid-50’s to the low 50’s [and Polis shows a result somewhere in-between, from low-50’s to mid-40’s] . It is still unlikely that the coalition seat would drop below 50% off this estimate, unless one of the two smaller coalition parties falls below the 5% threshold.

For SDKU the most recent polls of FOCUS and MVK show a more mixed pattern: in MVK, SDKU dropped a point from February to April but is two points up on its results from January. FOCUS shows the identical pattern but off by a month: in FOCUS polls SDKU dropped a point from March to April but up two points from February. [Polis actually shows SDKU up, suggesting the same sort of random fluctuation within a quite narrow range.] This kind of mapping is probably pointless however. What is clear is that SDKU is fluctuating quite a bit within its normal range and voters themselves are probably fluctuating as well. What is striking is that SDKU has lost so little in the face of a huge rise in SaS which should, in theory, compete for the same voters.

KDH shows almost the identical slow slide in both MVK and FOCUS, dropping about a point over the last two months (and slightly more from earlier polls) to a level around 9%. [Polis shows a slight drop but from a higher initial point.  For KDH it is the range that is unclear–the 9% of FOCUS, the 11% of MVK or the 13% of Polis–while the pattern of slight decline in the most recent months is common to all polls].  Like SDKU, KDH is probably seeing some effects from the rise of SaS: there was always a small cadre of voters who would opt for KDH as an alternative to SDKU. Now they have another alternative.

SaS shows virtually the same jump in both FOCUS and MVK [and only slightly smaller in Polis] and to virtually the same level—around 11.5% [and 9% in Polis, but SaS has tended to lag in Polis polls]. I suspect that some of these voters will, in the final equation, fall back to SDKU or KDH, but for the moment SaS has done well in exciting voters and does not seem to have made any major mistakes.

Hungarian parties. Here is really the only place where the [three] sets of major polls show differences in trend and even then it is only to place them in the same positions. The MVK poll in April is virtually identical to that of February, with MKP-SMK around 6% and Most-Hid around 5%, a result also reached by FOCUS.  [In the Polis poll the numbers for the two parties are stable as in MVK but the percentages are almost precisely are reversed, as in last month’s FOCUS poll, with Most-Hid a point ahead of MKP-SMK, with both ahead of the 5% threshold.]  For a party with weaker organizational basis and history, Most-Hid’s decline to near the threshold [in FOCUS and MVK polls] must be rather worrisome for the party’s leaders, but what will happen here, however, remains extremely difficult to assess.

The current opposition, particularly the right has done well lately. The parliamentary right has dropped somewhat, but not much, and the rise of SaS recently is more than double the combined losses of SDKU and KDH. In fact both FOCUS and MVK show an overall rise for the three parties combined by a significant amount: about [4 points in Polis in the last six months] 6 points in FOCUS and about 8 points in MVK. This was a fairly predictable outcome, I think, as the campaign and the emergence of new parties gave the right a stronger focus and pushed at the relatively soft electoral support for the current government (exemplified by Radicova’s ability to reach near parity with Gasparovic in 2009). The ability of these parties to form a government is still a longshot, but these numbers probably better reflect the overall composition of opinion in Slovakia’s society (keeping in mind that some of the SaS support, I suspect, is not from the ideologically “right” but from dissatisfied “new party” support which had previously gone to Smer.

But the threshold will still be the key determinant.

Dashboard News: April MVK follows FOCUS on coalition drop and opposition rise.

When two different polls agree on shifts in most parties it is time to pay attention.  The April poll for FOCUS came out last week and this week MVK revealed its own (always, to my regret and frustration, with less information than that provided by FOCUS).  The movements in both of these polls correspond quite closely, even if they begin from different baselines: Smer, HZDS and KDH down, SaS up, others moving in different directions but not by much.  The overall movement of coalition and opposition also agrees fairly closely, with the coalition dropping to some of its lowest levels since the coalition took office almost four years ago, though still likely ahead (despite headlines that “the opposition has caught up to Fico,” it is probably not that simple and it is the small details and narrow margins that will make the difference in what kinds of governments are viable after the election.

As always the numbers are on the Dashboard.  The analysis is below:

Both MVK and FOCUS show an almost identical drop for Smer of about 2.5 points from February to April (and with FOCUS the March numbers are not far out of line with that trend). Because MVK begins with a lower baseline, it shows a lower result—35.1–which is in line with MVK’s overall lower result for Smer. Nevertheless the number is still striking because it is the lowest preference that Smer has received on an MVK poll since the just before the 2006 election (The FOCUS numbers from last week are low by FOCUS averages as well—the third lowest since 2007). Why so low? Probably a certain amount of fatigue, accumulation of scandals and problems and, I suspect, a bit of defection to SaS and, this month, to SNS.

FOCUS showed a big jump for SNS in April. MVK also shows a jump, though smaller in magnitude and from a smaller baseline. Still, it puts SNS more safely above the threshold in both of these major polls. How safe is anyone’s guess. It is hard to know how to think about this party’s chances. It’s past levels suggest that it has a decent level of residual support (if not strong organization) and I have been slightly surprised by its low but the years of scandal and extreme behavior by the party leader certainly have pushed it toward the low edge of viablility.

For HZDS the last two months show a drop in both FOCUS and MVK to just above the threshold of viability. Of course it has been at that level on and off for the last year, and the overall trend has been quite consistently downward. The question is whether that downward trend will overcome the party’s fairly loyal voter base. This one will be close.

The current coalition shows slightly different patterns in FOCUS and MVK: in MVK the pattern is one of clear decline from the mid-50’s to the mid-40’s. In FOCUS polls, the drop is much smaller: from mid-50’s to the low 50’s. It is still unlikely that the coalition seat would drop below 50% off this estimate, unless one of the two smaller coalition parties falls below the 5% threshold.

For SDKU the most recent polls of FOCUS and MVK show a more mixed pattern: in MVK, SDKU dropped a point from February to April but is two points up on its results from January. FOCUS shows the identical pattern but off by a month: in FOCUS polls SDKU dropped a point from March to April but up two points from February. This kind of mapping is probably pointless however. What is clear is that SDKU is fluctuating quite a bit within its normal range and voters themselves are probably fluctuating as well. What is striking is that SDKU has lost so little in the face of a huge rise in SaS which should, in theory, compete for the same voters.

KDH shows almost the identical slow slide in both MVK and FOCUS, dropping about a point over the last two months (and slightly more from earlier polls) to a level around 9%. Like SDKU, KDH is probably seeing some effects from the rise of SaS: there was always a small cadre of voters who would opt for KDH as an alternative to SDKU. Now they have another alternative.

SaS shows virtually the same jump in both FOCUS and MVK and to virtually the same level—around 11.5%. I suspect that some of these voters will, in the final equation, fall back to SDKU or KDH, but for the moment SaS has done well in exciting voters and does not seem to have made any major mistakes.

Hungarian parties. Here is really the only place where the two sets of major polls show differences in trend and even then it is only to place them in the same positions. The MVK poll in April is virtually identical to that of February, with MKP-SMK around 6% and Most-Hid around 5%, a result also reached by FOCUS. For a party with weaker organizational basis and history, Most-Hid’s decline to near the threshold must be rather worrisome for the party’s leaders, but what will happen here, however, remains extremely difficult to assess.

The current opposition, particularly the right has done well lately. The parliamentary right has dropped somewhat, but not much, and the rise of SaS recently is more than double the combined losses of SDKU and KDH. In fact both FOCUS and MVK show an overall rise for the three parties combined by a significant amount: about 6 points in the last six months in FOCUS and about 8 points in MVK. This was a fairly predictable outcome, I think, as the campaign and the emergence of new parties gave the right a stronger focus and pushed at the relatively soft electoral support for the current government (exemplified by Radicova’s ability to reach near parity with Gasparovic in 2009). The ability of these parties to form a government is still a longshot, but these numbers probably better reflect the overall composition of opinion in Slovakia’s society (keeping in mind that some of the SaS support, I suspect, is not from the ideologically “right” but from dissatisfied “new party” support which had previously gone to Smer.

But the threshold will still be the key determinant.

Dashboard News: Slovak papers see the light

It is absolutely delightful for me to see that after years of publishing one poll after another without much analysis and presenting each difference as “news”, two major papers in Slovakia have begun to present long-term time-series data of polls.  I suspect they will still present each new poll as “news” (though congratulations to them also for doing much more comparison and acknowledgment) but now readers can at least do some comparing on their own.  A few brief thoughts on the two attempts

  • Of the two the less ambitious effort is Pravda’s which is simply a story link containing tables of results from the major polls from January until the present.  It does the job but without much visual impact.  The full chart can be found here http://spravy.pravda.sk/prieskumy-agentur-focus-median-a-mvk-dvb-/sk-volby.asp?c=A100421_160242_sk-volby_p12.  Since this is merely a story page it is not clear whether Pravda intends this as an ongoing feature or merely as a one-off presentation of the data.  The omissions are also interesting: first, there are no smaller parties listed even though FOCUS does list the smaller parties and those parties sometimes rise to the level of relevance, if only in the way they take votes away from others (by this standard, SaS would not have qualified to appear on the list until November of 2009); the other interesting omission is Median, the polling firm with the “you name it” methodology.  I have been critical of this in the past and suggested that the poll is out of line, so its omission is justified here.  I use Median to look at trends, but without graphics (as in Pravda’s case) this is not as relevant and including Median might simply be confusing.
  • Sme’s effort is rather more ambitious, a graphic interface with three parts.  The top one shows politicians standing next to lines representing party support and four buttons for polling firms.  Clicking on the poll button shows the results for the most recent iteration of the poll and the month in which it was taken.  Hovering over the individual politicians and lines shows the numerical level of support for the party.  This is great, and it is great to have a choice, but there are two minor problems: first, the lines are dwarfed by the pictures of the politicians and so it is hard to gauge the relative levels of support by eye, and you have to move the bar across to see numbers for individual parties so it is not easy to ‘eyeball’ the levels either.  Of course this is a relatively minor problem (and one easily fixed).  The second part of the display is a long-awaited (by me at least) effort to put party support for various polls and various time periods together in the same graph.  I’ve been doing this on and off for several years in this blog (most recently in the Dashboard, above) and have been waiting for a long time for Slovak papers to do it so I wouldn’t have to and could focus on the analysis rather than the creation of the graphics.  Unfortunately, while this comes close it does not get close enough for me to be able to shut down my efforts.  There are several minor but significant problems: first, the graphic rounds the numbers off to the nearest percentage point, which is actually fine for most parties but problematic in discerning key trends for smaller parties where rounding up or down may actually mean mischaracterizing party support by up to 10%; second, and most important, the graphic puts lines and dots where they do not belong.  Because it measures in one month increments, it puts dots even where polling firms did not issue polls (and the reader has no way of knowing when without looking at Pravda or my own data); it also puts all polls on the same line when in fact they may have been taken at significantly different periods during a month, something that becomes important as we get into the final months; the biggest problem is that it carries these forward from “present” levels, suggesting, for example, that we have data for Premier polls in April (or MVK in March and April) when we simply do not.   Still, this is such a big improvement over what has been done before that I am extremely impressed, and the problems above could probably be fixed by a clever webdesigner in about 2 hours.   The last part of Sme’s graphics is an assessment of the number of parliamentary seats produced by the results in question using “person” icons.  This is fine, but takes up much more space than it needs to do and does not easily tell the important story (mine doesn’t either, and I should fix that) which is how much that represents for various coalition combinations.

All of this means that I’m not yet ready to leave the dashboard business, but the great news is that the average consumer of news in Slovakia now has a relatively easy method for assessing the meaning of claims about polls and that is fantastic.  It also means that Slovaks, for the moment at least, have pulled ahead of their Czech neighbors who also have an election coming up and whose Lidove Noviny publishes what was, until Sme, the best graphical analysis: http://www.lidovky.cz/ln-volby-ps10.asp?v=preference.  The graphics here are better and more readable than Sme’s but they lack the comparative polling elements (and therefore the implicit “trendfinder” capability) that Sme has introduced.  Perhaps it is time for me to get into the Czech dashboard business as well.  Until the papers catch up again.

Dashboard News: Polls disagree, parties shift (maybe), but blocs stay stable

The blog has been slow lately as I’ve finished up some local and international projects and concluded the semester.  And because Slovak poll numbers tend to be a mid-month phenomenon.  I have lots that I hope to talk about in the coming week but for now I want to get a jump on the numbers that appeared yesterday from Median and today from FOCUS.

While the two polls show a bunch of individual shifts in various parties, the limits of the polls themselves make these suspect to closer scrutiny.  What emerges is some uncertainty about specifics but a fairly clear general picture of stability (one that does not lend much insight into the crucial question of performance of those parties near the edge of viability (the two Slovak National parties HZDS and SNS and the two Hungarian National parties MKP-SMK and Most-Hid) which will affect coalition performance in a major way.

The overall results can be found on the dashboard.  Analysis is below.

Smer. A slight drop in FOCUS, stable in Median.  The difference between the two is about 7 points, one of the wider gaps between FOCUS and Median on Smer, but not the widest.  Median’s method of asking people to name parties should tend to boost the reported fortunes of well known parties (such as Smer).  No great changes or surprises here.

HZDS: Stable in both Median and FOCUS and at what are near-record lows in both polls.  It is interesting (but difficult to parse) that after HZDS’s huge drop in the Median polls between January and February, that the two are relatively close, between 5% and 6%.  HZDS thus stands at the threshold of viability for both a pollster that regularly poll about average for HZDS (FOCUS) and one that has recently polled high for HZDS (Median).

SNS: SME calls SNS’s rise in this month’s FOCUS poll a “second wind.”  Is this right?  Maybe, but not certainly.  This may reflect the recent Hungarian election results, but those have been predictable for so long (a colleague of mine wrote a paper in March in which he put the Orban victory in Hungary in past tense before it had even happened) that I wonder how much that really influences SNS numbers.  but I have doubts about whether this reflects a broader rise in preferences or simply a polling artifact.  Of the major existing parties, SNS poll results have a slightly greater propensity to jump around than do those of other parties.  The party saw a temporary drop of this same magnitude for one month late in 2009 and this may be a similar occurrence (in reverse) or a genuine Fidesz induced recovery.  Polis polls (which should be coming soon) may help us to tell if it is statistical noise.  Next month’s poll will tell us if it is a temporary blip.  It is worth noting, however that an article that says SNS has a second wind blows some of that wind itself.

The current coalition: Extremely stable, the even as individual party results have jumped around in both polls.  In Median polls coalition support dropped by about one twentieth over the last 3 months, from 60% to 57% while in FOCUS polls its support has stayed remarkably consistent: 50.6% in February, 50.1% in March and 50.8% in April (down from the mid-50’s in late 2009).  Losses by any one of these parties seem, for the present, to offset gains by others.

SDKU: Stable, though it is hard to know exactly what that means.  SDKU has gone through big changes lately both in its internal structure (Dzurinda to Miklos v. Radicova) and external environment (the rise of SaS and Figel in KDH) and has jumped around quite a bit.  That said, on this party FOCUS and Median have produced relatively similar results for this party, and continue to do so, putting relatively stable around 13%.  Read one way, Radicova’s arrival has not helped the party; read another way, the party has not lost much despite the emergence of a significant rival (or two) on its own territory.

KDH: Unclear.  FOCUS shows a small drop for KDH while Median shows a big jump.  Hard to parse this as well.  In February and March FOCUS was the outlier on KDH showing lower support smaller gains than any of the other three major polls.  For now FOCUS is all we have for April so it’s hard to say whether to take its numbers seriously.

SaS: No drop yet.  Every poll shows the same trend for SaS: an almost uninterrupted rise during 2009 with a brief pause or slight reversal in February/March 2010.  FOCUS new poll shows renewed growth in April and we do not have any other polls that confirm or deny that movement.  Median shows the same trend, though it’s much lower numbers for SaS are undoubtedly the result of its different survey question (which does not specify any options a priori).  In this case the SaS mechanism may offer a useful corrective for the numbers found by other parties (with lack-of-awareness of a party substituting here for lack-of-commitment to that party).  It is hard to believe that SaS will sustain results over 11% in the final tally if ANO and SOP did not, but this result does seem to put it out of immediate danger of falling below the threshold (thus reducing the number of parties in danger to “only” four.

Most-Hid and MKP-SMK: Stable but polls offer no insight on the key “threshold” question. The Hungarian parties results remain the most difficult to judge, at least with regard to the most important question of whether either party (or both together) will pass the 5% threshold.  FOCUS puts both parties right on the line (MKP stable over 3 months, Most-Hid dropping from a higher position).  I have argued that one of the two should pass the threshold but it is not clear which one.  The current stasis (with both above the threshold) makes it unlikely that one party will be seen as “running away with it” and lower the possibility of something like an 8% v. 3% split (not ideal, sacrificing maximum gain for maximum loss) while maximizing the possibility of either something like a 5.9% v. 5.1% split (a best case scenario) or something like 6.1% v. 4.9% (a worst case scenario).  Median, I think, simply needs to be ignored on Hungarian parties.  There is no basis that I can think of for trusting a result that shows the total Hungarian electorate at less than 8%; Median puts it at 6.2%.

The current opposition: Steady increase.  Averaging parties into blocs shows a lower overall shift (suggesting that volatility is within rather than between blocs).  Median shows very little change for the current opposition over time, and only 0.3% gain in the last month.  FOCUS likewise shows only a 1% gain in the most recent month though the longer term numbers suggest a rise of about one tenth since late 2009, likely consisting of new voters attracted by SaS and Most-Hid.

Jokes from the bathroom wall (about Communism)

My students laugh when I tell them I study cleavage in postcommunist countries, but sometimes, by accident, the image that flashes into their minds is the correct one. Those who lament the disappearance of communist era political humor can take some solace in my recent discovery of the following poem (badly translated by me) on a bathroom wall at the University of Muenster in Westphalia.

Was dem Weib sein Büstenhalter
ist für das Volk der Ulbricht–Walter,
denn beide bringen ganz enorm
die Massen in die rechte Form		 A woman’s bra–a Büstenhalter,
is like our leader Ulbricht (Walter),
as both compress the quite enorm-
ous masses into their proper form

I have no idea why it should appear in “West” Germany 65 years after its likely origination, but I’m glad to see the genre still around. Seeing it sparks three small side notes:

  1. Political humor has been in the news in Slovakia with an interesting but ultimately inconclusive April fool’s day article on political humor in Pravda, the most interesting part of which is the report of an entirely characteristic joke (both in form and substance) told by Vladimir Meciar in 2006:  “Meciar goes to the WC with Dzurinda and Fico and they say to him, “Why are you turning away.  Don’t be ashamed, we’re all guys here.”  To which Meciar replies, “I know we’re all guys and I’m not ashamed, but I also know about you, and that whenever you see something big Fico wants to nationalize it and Dzurinda wants to sell it to foreign investors.”
  2. SME, for its part, has posted a rather elaborate online election game which involves making the right choices for candidates: http://volby.sme.sk/hra/  Some of the questions are themselves quite funny and there’s a nice selection of Shooty’s best cartoons.
  3. In the Czech Republic MF Dnes has done some decent photoshopping to put Necas in old-style Komsomol imagery (a visualization of Paroubek’s recent joke):
  4. Finally, in searching for the Ulbricht poem above I discovered that the Büstenhalter-Walter rhyme found another life in the best possible circumstances:  the German version of Monty Python’s Lumberjack Song, in which it replaces “bra” and “papa”.  Nice job here by Michael Palin.