As much as 13 percent of the difference is between the New Serbian Political Thought (NSPM) survey on the state of the Serbian political scene, which was exclusively published by "Vreme", and the Isposos agency, which was published only seven days later.
In a July survey, the NSPM measured that, if there were only two lists, the united students, opposition and civil movements would take 42,1 percent, and government 32,7 percent, (26 percent are undecided). Such results are confirmed by the research of Srint Insight.
Not even seven days have passed since the publication of these two major studies, for Ispsos to publish its own. According to him, the election rating of the Serbian Progressive Party is 46,6 percent, "Blic" announced, with 22 percent undecided.
Ipsos skipped the student list
"I don't like to comment on your research, especially since there are always methodological differences between them," Đordje Vukadinović, the author of the New Serbian Political Thought research, told Vreme. "However, two things in the Ipsos survey really stand out."
The first, he explains, is that the respondents declared that they give only five percent of their support to students. The authors gave an explanation for this: they did not offer the respondents the option to support the students at all, because they are not an existing party, but only put political parties on the list of offered answers.
"So it turned out that those five percent are actually people who said that wording on their own initiative," says Vukadinović. "Although the authors fenced themselves off, that fence doesn't drink water for me because, on the other side, all living and semi-living movements are offered."
Respondents were offered to declare for, for example, Enough is enough or POKS, but not for the student list.
"That's how we got an almost bizarre finding that can hardly be justified", he thinks.
How does the result come out?
The second, even more problematic item, for Vukadinović, is that the authors separated the parties of the ruling coalition, which is why they got an unrealistic result.
"If you add up all the small parties, among which are the Socialist Movement, Rasim Ljajić's party, PUPS and other parties connected to SNS, you get their best result in history," says Vukadinović and adds that, of course, you should not count 2020 when part of the opposition boycotted the elections.
If Vojislav Šešelj's Serbian Radical Party is added to all of them, the total can reach 56 percent of support for parties serving Vučić, which is more than in December 2023, and all this after the lithium protests and everything that happened after the railway station canopy in Novi Sad.
"It is, to put it mildly, strange and unbelievable," says Vukadinović.
He doesn't mind sitting down in front of the cameras with his colleagues from Ispos and talking about the differences, crossing the numbers and seeing how everyone came to their results.
What are the conclusions of Ipsos?
The respondents were asked the question: "If only parties, and not coalitions, ran in the parliamentary elections for the Assembly of Serbia, who would you vote for?"
Out of the total number of respondents, 46,6 percent of them indicated SNS, while 6,8 percent voted for Sava Manojlović's Movement for Change. SPS won 6,4 percent in this vote; students (not listed as an option at all) 5 percent; Freedom and Justice Party of Dragan Đilas 4,1; and Branimir Nestorović's party 3,5 percent.
The new face of Serbia is at 3,3; and DS at 3,1; while Nova DSS has 2,7 percent, and Miroslav Aleksić's National Movement of Serbia 2,5 percent. According to Ipsos, the Green-Left Front is at 2,1, Seselje's Serbian Radical Party at 1,7; and Aleksandar Jovanović Ćuta's Ecological Uprising at 1,7, as well as Zdravko Ponoš's SRCE.
DJB has 1,2 percent; Boris Tadić with SDS 0,9, Zavetnici 0,7; as well as POKS.
The Movement of Free Citizens with Pavlo Grbović has 0,6 percent, and the Movement of Socialists with Aleksandar Vulin 0,4 percent, at least according to the Ipsos survey.
According to Ispos, students and the opposition together would have between 25 and 30 percent.
Two studies in "Vremen"
In July, "Vreme" published a survey of the New Serbian Political Thought.
To the question: "If in the next elections the current government and the entire opposition came out in only two columns, who would you most likely vote for?" 42,1 percent of respondents voted for the united list of the opposition, students and civil movements, and 32,7 percent for the current government.
Nikola Jović and Dušan Vučićević from the Sprint Insight agency, who also published their research in "Vremen", have a different conclusion.
In a hypothetical collision of only two lists, the student list would take 54,8 percent, and Vučić's 42,1 percent (but without undeclared candidates). their research shows.
The numbers are significantly different than in 2023, when 55 percent of respondents believed that Serbia was going in the right direction. Today, only 33,5 percent of citizens believe that the government is leading Serbia in the right direction, while 53,5 percent believe that the country is moving in the wrong direction, added the Sprint Insight agency. The rest of the respondents, 13 percent of them, could not take a clear position.
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