"I have yet to meet that mythical being that will come out on the elections, and breaks between votes for student or for Vučić", says Dušan Lj. Milenković, a political consultant who deals with public opinion research at Sprint Insight.
Since the beginning of the student protests, especially since the announcement of the Student List, that camp has consistently had high levels of support.
That's why it seems to some that the air is standing still and that the campaign - no matter how much there is nonsense, fabrications of the "Ustasha", scandals and trampling around the villages - is already over long ago, even though officially it is only entering the final part.
In the survey of our Međuvreme newsletter, which is by no means representative, as many as 57 percent of readers said that now the only important thing is to prepare for election control.
Of the others, 30 percent say that everyone already knows who they are going to vote for, 8 percent that the campaign might convince some people, and 5 percent that everything is broken in the campaign.
According to Milenkovic, these 8 percent are right because even representative surveys show that some people decide before the elections themselves. He is not torn between the government and the opposition front, but rather whether to leave or not, or who exactly to vote for.
"It is safer to say that a huge number of people have decided to vote. There is a small part of people who declare themselves undecided - you never know if they are really undecided or they just say so in the surveys," Milenkovic told "Vreme".
Photo: 021.rsRepresentatives of the Student List at a meeting in Novi Sad
Research as a campaign
Research is also part of the campaign in a way. Agencies that are not close to the government - such as Sprint Insight - see students as an advantage, but this is also very colorful.
For example, during the summer, Crta gave the Student List a ten percent advantage, and the New Serbian Political Thought two percent. On the other hand, Faktor plus announced that SNS has an absolute majority, with as many as 16 percent more than students.
Clearly, with all the possible differences in the samples, someone is lying quite a bit. It remains for the citizen to accept that the fight will be uncertain and to avoid both euphoria and pessimism.
According to Milenkovic, the difference could be made by smaller lists that have the hardest time attracting undecided voters in conditions of polarization. They are simply crushed between two large blocks.
"If the anti-regime camp were to be divided mathematically, so that everyone passes the census - both the block around the SSP, and the block around the NPS and the one around the New DSS - then the anti-regime front wins, even if it doesn't take the undecideds," he says.
What is the spiral of silence?
It is already becoming a game of smaller numbers, where any percentage can break. And that's where the book "Spiral of Silence" by the German public opinion researcher Elisabeth Nelle-Neumann comes into play, where the answers are extremely important for today's situation in Serbia.
According to the theory, confirmed by research, which Nele-Neuman put forward in the 1970s, the more the public gets the impression that a certain camp (party, attitude...) is stronger, the more people from that camp talk, and the more people approach the camp.
"Being on the winning side? Probably most people are not so demanding," Nele-Neumann writes. "I cannot expect positions or power from victory. It will be about something more modest, which connects people - an effort not to remain isolated."
Whoever (thinks) is in the minority prefers to keep his mouth shut. And that then has an effect - those who talk give the impression that there are more of them, that they are winning, and thus push the "opponents" into a spiral of silence, and attract the undecided.
Photo: Tanjug/Saška DrobnjakMiloš Vučević at the collection of signatures for the newspaper "Aleksandar Vučić - United Serbia"
Two realities in Serbia
In Serbia, her model is only somewhat applicable, because there are two parallel realities. Who, for example, watches Informer, might think that only traitors and "Ustasha" vote for the Student List and that it cannot and must not win.
Anyone who is informed differently would conclude that the hour has finally come for the fall of the government and that everyone who cares about Serbia must be against the regime.
In political marketing, the term "secondary creator of public opinion" is known - these are people who, in their environment, at the workplace, in a bar or in the neighborhood, convince others of their cause.
It is perhaps the only method more powerful than excruciating television propaganda.
In translation, those who have already made up their minds about who they will vote for can attract some undecided voters just by talking about it. And maybe that will move some percentages and eventually break.
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