Hungarian voters who followed exclusively media close to the government (which until recently were almost all) and public opinion polls by pro-government agencies were quite shocked by the results of the April parliamentary elections, in which the coalition gathered around Peter Magyar trampled the Orbán regime - like "Spedicia" a frog. You could see it from the expressions on their faces as they watched the results in front of Fidesz - until then the ruling party - which were announced relatively quickly after the closing of the polling stations and continuously "updated" on the official website by the state election agency.
illustrator: vladimir stankovski...
Despite the deficit of democracy and autocratic kleptocracy, Hungary is an institutionally more serious country than Serbia, so it was not until late at night that the "chief boss" announced the results of the election, reading from a notebook. Let's not talk about the fact that Orban's black-shirted public entrepreneurs did not beat opposition citizens and chased armed jeeps around the polling stations, and that the police assisted them in this. As if Orbán had still conceded defeat, so millions of people didn't have to march for days in the streets to defend their votes.
Here, however, the differences between Serbia and its northern neighbor are more or less exhausted. The citizens of Hungary also had a very difficult, as it were historical task to remove from the door a political monster steeped in corruption, crime, abuse of institutions, primitivism and media darkness. As in Serbia, the government produced a parallel reality in which many lived: Hungary is the best of all the worlds that many around them want to destroy - from Brussels to Kiev to internal enemies.
In that parallel world, agencies for researching citizens' political preferences that are on the regime's payroll announced weeks before the election that Orbán would win again, liars. Those projections were broadcast and rebroadcast in regime media, day and night. Believers believed and then emotionally fell apart. It ended the way it ended: Hungary's Tisa won a million and a bit more votes than Orban. By all accounts, both Orbán and those agencies will end up in the dustbin of history. And those independents, who worked professionally and ethically, and to a good extent anticipated the election results - will remain alive. By the way, those agencies were declared foreign mercenaries and enemies of Hungary in the campaign.
The goal of Orbán's regime was identical to the goal that the fraternal camarilla has been setting before itself for a long time, which has attached itself to the citizens of Serbia and has not come down for a decade or so. Public opinion polls published by regime leaders do not have the purpose of presenting the real atmosphere in society, but quite the opposite: to use it to form public opinion, that is, to "pump". Why? There are many reasons, but here are some of them: they want to make the so-called bandwagon effect, which is based on the psychological and sociological phenomenon whereby a portion of undecided voters vote for those they believe will be the winners. There is another important reason: it wants to send a message that the regime is invincible, which leads to the demobilization of citizens who are its opponents.
For the progressives in recent months, it is especially important that the results of the polls restore self-confidence among their clientele, which has become quite frightened since November 2024 until now; many of them are waiting for the curve to jump out of the train that is about to crash into the abyss or into Zabel. In this way, the incompetent institution is trying to send a message that it has things firmly under control, even though the state and society are falling apart before everyone's eyes.
Those researches that do not go to his hands simply remain silent.
IN COLLISION WITH REALITY
Faktor Plus, an agency that is considered to be close to the progressive regime, released the results of a public opinion survey the other day. According to her, the ruling SNS has the support of even 46,4 percent of citizens. They found the student list at 28,7 percent, and according to them, the party on ventilators, SPS, would certainly pass the census (somewhere around five percentage points). The research does not coincide with some other research, both those that have been published and those that are accessible only to the well-informed, which show that such a large difference between the parties in power and the overall coalition bloc is by no means realistic.
Other studies, on the contrary, show that the opponents of the regime have more support from the citizens than all the ruling parties in the crowd, and that the only question is whether the opposition factors will use this advantage or squander it with wrong political moves. But let's put the research aside for a moment: a much stronger proof that the results of the FP are questionable are the results of the recently conducted local elections in ten self-governments of Serbia.
Admittedly, the head of this agency, Vladimir Pejić, questions his own results in a statement to the media: he roughly says that things regarding the student list are not yet completely clear, and that's why the score is the way it is. Of course, the question arises here - if things are not completely clear, why was there such a rush to go public with these studies.
Cynics say that Faktor plus, regardless of the fact that it proves that the regimes would win approximately the same percentage of votes in the parliamentary elections as in 2023 (as if nothing happened from November 1, 2024 to today), is still quite optimistic for the opposition. Compared to his research from last August, the student list has grown more than three times - then they found it at 8,7 percent. In September of last year, IPSOS found that students have even less support: about 8,1 percent. The reason is of a methodological nature: at that time, the student list was not included in the list of offered options, but the surveyed citizens had to add it themselves.
Methodological "failures" are not something serious research agencies should be proud of. Dušan Spasojević from the Faculty of Political Sciences in Belgrade says that, when it comes to public opinion research agencies, the key problem is that there is no market in this area, that is, some companies are not on the market but depend on state money.
"It is more important for them to continue to cooperate with the authorities, to keep their businesses, than to be verified by the market", says Spasojević in an interview with "Vreme".
Much, of course, depends on the research methodology. Some researchers tell us that with methodological "tricks" you can get the results you want to get. But that has nothing to do with ethics and professionalism.
In this sense, political scientist Vujo Ilić tells "Vreme" that there are research and non-research reasons for large deviations of research from the real situation on the ground.
"On the one hand, the results depend on the way the research is designed, and especially on how the questions are formulated and whether and what kind of offer is presented to the respondents. If you do not offer a student list, because it has not yet been formally announced, a smaller number of respondents will spontaneously mention it. If you include it among the options, it depends on how you present it, and the problem is that the respondents may be more likely to communicate their attitude towards the student movement or student demands than the hypothetical list in the elections. In my opinion, this second option is still more methodologically correct, but it has its consequences, and these are all important questions that all researchers must answer. However, there are also strong non-research reasons for which research is done in a certain way, while the results are selectively published and marketed without sufficient context, which makes it difficult for the public to assess their validity. This is why we often get the impression that we are in a forest of data in which it is difficult to find meaning," he says.
photo: dejan živancevic / tanjugTHE FIRST MAN TO ANNOUNCE THE RESULTS OF ALL ELECTIONS: A. Vučić
HAD TO RESPECT REALITY
Director of the New Serbian Political Thought (NSPM), Đorđe Vukadinović, is a bit more direct. He says that both IPSOS and Faktor plus are agencies that are "close to the government, to say the least", and that the results they announce depend on that. He adds that, despite this, in the latest research, Faktor plus had to acknowledge the reality and admit that the student list exists and that it can no longer be ignored. Unlike the previous survey.
"Both agencies previously published rather comical results, in which the student list was at around eight percent of support," says Vukadinović. "It was the result of a small, but methodologically very problematic 'engineering'. The student list was not offered among the answers. In other words, it was treated completely unequally, especially if you bear in mind that among the options offered were also lists and parties that, it seems, even their leaders forgot existed," he says.
From the point of view of the research conducted regularly by NSPM, Vukadinović says that this research is more problematic when it comes to the rating of the government than of opposition actors. The findings of the NSPM student list give more than the Faktor plus agency, it has been recording continuous growth since the summer of last year. Vukadinović believes that the support is already above 30 percent, although the figures of the latest survey have not yet been compared.
"When you look at the results of the opposition in the Faktor Plus survey, they are mostly within the limits that we also note - here the students and the opposition are somewhat stronger, but these are relatively acceptable deviations. The real problem, i.e. the complete 'Kurtzschluss', arises when the percentages attributed to the government are added up. The problem is not only the result of 46 percent for the SNS, although it is also obviously inflated. In our case, the maximum total result of all parties in the government - SPS, including the Radicals, Zavetnik and others "green beans" - about 43 percent. In the Faktor Plus survey, only 54-55 percent are added to that. It is particularly interesting that there are between ten and 12 percent of citizens who are against the government, but currently cannot decide between the student list, the pro-European opposition and the right-wing opposition. as if they ended up on the account out of nowhere SNS, that is, the regime parties," Vukadinović points out.
THE CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE HAS BEEN GOING ON FOR A LONG TIME
He reminds that IPSOS in its various incarnations made big mistakes or "mistakes" in the projection of election results. The best example is the one from 2012, before the second round of presidential elections. At that time, this agency went public with the prediction that Tadić will win coldly with around 58 percent of the votes, while his opponent Tomislav Nikolić was "found" at 42 percent. In the end, however, Nikolić won, winning slightly more than 51 percent. Vukadinović tells us that agencies know how to "overpump" and create a counter-effect. And IPSOS was later "removed". In this case, the citizens who were for Tadić believed in a certain victory, so they went somewhere on that Sunday in May. Namely, many people believe in the results of fake polls, so they start behaving too confidently. This applies primarily to political actors.
Some other researchers we talked to remind us that the results of the second round of the 2012 elections did not depend only on excessive relaxation of the voters due to the belief that Tadić would surely win, but also on the conflict in the Democratic Party. Some party committees demobilized before the second round of elections, allegedly deliberately letting Tadić down the drain. There was talk about it in public. Some even spread the conspiracy theory that IPSOS itself was involved in all this.
Vukadinović recalls that Strategic Marketing (later became IPSOS) had another "big gaffe". Before the unsuccessful elections for the president of Serbia in 2002, when he allegedly favored Miroljub Labus over Koštunica.
Political scientist Vujo Ilić also recalls that year.
"Although that interpretation of research from 2012 is often mentioned, it was by no means an isolated case. Ten years earlier, a serious debate was held on the pages of Vremena, regarding the possibility of a candidate winning already in the first round of the presidential elections. Even then, it was warned that the continuation of politically motivated interpretations of research, which do not arise from the results themselves, could lead to a crisis of confidence in the entire profession of researchers. We have been living in this crisis of confidence for a long time. A good part of the polarized political public believes in 'their own' researchers, while one part does not trust anyone. However, there is an ultimate test, and that is the elections. Before the elections in Hungary, there were big differences in percentages, and it turned out that, for more than a year, research agencies that overestimated Orban's support and underestimated Peter Magyar's. This did not help Orban, at least in part, clear up research field and restore confidence in independent agencies, those that have been publishing more reliable results," he says.
The question remains whether, in the event of the fall of the government in Serbia, a serious market will emerge in which research agencies will compete to truthfully and ethically inform the public, and not to manipulate it. And will political factors finally understand that research is not for "pumping" but to learn something from it.
photo: Jelena MrđaDISTRUST IN POLLS AND POLLS: A list of citizens that should also say how much the electoral body is in Serbia
RESEARCH THAT CREATES REALITY
Professor Jovo Bakić (see box) tells "Vreme" that he "doesn't give a dime" for research into public opinion and political preferences of citizens in Serbia. He believes that in the conditions of authoritarianism, fear and the absence of political freedoms, it is not possible to conduct research that will really give quality results and reflect the real atmosphere in society. A large number of published researches, in his opinion, serve exclusively for propaganda purposes.
We asked Dusan Spasojevic if he agrees with this statement. He says that it is true that Serbia is in conditions of autocracy and limited political freedoms, which is why people are often afraid to answer researchers' questions honestly.
"That's why research results should always be compared with objective indicators, such as the results of previous elections. An additional problem is that almost all research is done over the phone. When you talk to an unknown person on the phone, you don't know who is on the other end. The more pressure and fear society is exposed to, the less likely people will openly express oppositional views if they think it could cause them a problem. This is exactly why electoral surprises are possible, and local elections become important as a kind of verification of the real political mood on the ground." says Spasojević, adding that this is not only a problem for Serbia, but for all countries where there is political instability and inequality, and where the political atmosphere is rapidly changing.
"This is exactly the situation in Serbia today. Until the local elections, we did not have a clear confirmation that the student list really functions as a serious political factor or part of a wider opposition bloc. That is why some research was important - not only as a measurement of the mood, but also as a signal to the citizens that students have a real chance in the elections", says Spasojević.
In addition, it is important to read the research carefully, as a whole, taking into account the methodology, the sample and other factors, and not just their media presentation, he adds. Sometimes the problem is not in the research, but in the way the media presents it, what they put in the foreground, what in the background, and what they keep silent about.
"It is difficult to precisely distinguish all forms of manipulation of the results, because in our media space the issue of publishing research has become inseparable from political propaganda. There are professional standards of responsible reporting, but they are almost universally violated. In 2021, charges were brought against the Austrian chancellor for the misuse of public resources in financing media reporting on research that was favorable to him. I would not be surprised if similar things happen here on a monthly basis. To simplify, what is the situation in our media in general, this is also the case with the publication of research results", Vujo Ilić tells us.
"PEOPLE WILL GO TO THE ELECTIONS TO EXPRESS THEIR OPINION, REGARDLESS OF SURVEYS"
Some analysts say that the regime managed to divert the public's attention from the key problems of society with daily election announcements. Everyone accepted the thesis that things will be resolved in the elections, and many that until then they should make peace a little. Some research that says college students are a slight favorite supports this. Could good research results be a demobilizing factor, as in 2012?
"In the situation as it is today, there is not much room for voter demobilization. The elections will be extremely competitive and all actors will try to get the most out of their capacities. Demobilization is possible in relatively stable political circumstances, as they seemed at first glance in 2012. Today, in Serbia, as well as recently in Hungary, the political atmosphere is too tense for surveys to have a significant impact on turnout. People will go to the polls to express their opinion, regardless of polls," he says. Spasojevic.
He believes that, however, it is possible that the very announcement of the election and the perception that the student list is the favorite somewhat calmed a part of the opposition public when it comes to street protests.
"But it is probably also a natural process, because protests cannot last indefinitely with the same intensity. In any case, in the final political reckoning, it is difficult to expect a serious drop in voter mobilization," says Spasojević.
Finally, let's recall that in the 1990s public opinion pollsters had a hard time predicting the election result of the Serbian Radical Party. Seselj's party won many more votes than the polls said because people were ashamed to say they would vote for them. Since then, we have come to the point where many are now afraid to say that they will not vote for radicals with a changed name.
photo: marija janković...
Bojan Pajtić: The essence of the problem
Public opinion surveys in democratic societies should be an instrument of public information and a corrective to political processes. In Serbia, however, they have been turned into a means of political engineering and psychological pressure on citizens for years. In autocratic systems, such as the Vučić regime built, surveys no longer serve to measure the mood of citizens but to produce it.
That is the essence of the problem.
When the government controls most of the media space, when it creates an atmosphere of fear, when it monopolizes national frequencies and then through "research" informs citizens daily that it is invincible, then research becomes part of the propaganda apparatus, not scientific methodology. The goal is not to establish the truth, but to create a sense of political futility among citizens - that resistance is pointless, that the elections are decided in advance and that the regime is eternal.
It is a well-known phenomenon in political theory: bandwagon effect – the effect of favoring the supposed winner. People make part of their political decisions based on the perception of strength. Authoritarian regimes therefore do not just want power; they want a monopoly on the impression that power can never be threatened.
Vučić brought that mechanism to perfection. For years, we have seen surveys according to which SNS allegedly wins almost plebiscite support, while the opposition is portrayed as a statistical error. And then the elections in Belgrade, Novi Sad or Niš come and it turns out that the reality is significantly different from the propaganda image that has been created for months. Let's just remember the period before the Belgrade elections in 2023, when the regime's media published "research" for days about the huge advantage of the SNS, only to find out in the end that the government is barely trying to preserve the majority with serious accusations of election manipulation and voter importation.
Even more dangerous is the practice of selectively publishing research. Clients publish only those studies that suit them politically, while unfavorable results are hidden. This systematically misleads the public. In serious democracies there is a clear professional and ethical distance between researchers and political centers of power. In Serbia, you often have a situation where research agencies actually become an extended arm of the government's propaganda apparatus.
The problem is that citizens usually do not have insight into the methodology: who is the client, how big is the sample, how are the questions formulated, in which territories is the research conducted, what is the percentage of rejections and how are undecideds treated. And it is precisely in these details that room for manipulation is often hidden. It is enough for the question to be posed suggestively or for certain strata of the population to be systematically omitted from the sample and you get a politically desirable result under the guise of "science".
Unfortunately, Serbia has a long tradition of abusing public opinion polls. In the 1990s, Milošević's media published research that created the impression of the absolute dominance of the regime and the marginality of the opposition. Vučić modernized and technologically advanced that model. Today, it is no longer necessary to just falsify numbers; it is enough to constantly produce the impression of political supremacy through the coordinated action of television, tabloids, bot networks and "analysts".
From a legal point of view, it is especially problematic when research is used in the function of covert political propaganda during election campaigns, without clearly identifying the clients and the interests behind them. This directly violates the equality of participants in the political process and renders meaningless the idea of free formation of the will of the electorate, which in a democratic order would have to be protected public good.
The biggest consequence of such manipulations is not even the election result. The biggest consequence is the production of social apathy. When you bombard citizens for months with the message that the government is all-powerful, some people stop believing that changes are even possible. Authoritarian regimes do not survive on force alone. They survive on the citizens' organized sense of powerlessness.
And it is precisely this sense of powerlessness that is the basic political product of Vučić's propaganda machine.
photo: marija janković...
Jovo Bakić: I don't give a penny for public opinion research in Serbia
In an interview with "Vreme", Jovo Bakić, a professor at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, says that he does not give even five cents for public opinion research in Serbia. He believes that in authoritarian systems there is a fear that people will openly decide who to vote for. They sometimes even say they support the regime when they don't. Therefore, such research should not be taken for granted.
"It is enough to recall the Ipsos survey from 2012, according to which Boris Tadić had a huge advantage over Tomislav Nikolić, and we all know how the elections ended. Surveys often have a propaganda purpose and are often used to shape public opinion, rather than for its realistic presentation. The government is currently not issuing surveys, probably because the results are not in its favor. Although, whatever they are, I generally do not trust them. Especially when it comes to telephone polls. In our conditions, they are completely pointless. Even field research, which is otherwise more serious, because it involves a large and well-constructed sample, is problematic in our country. Under normal circumstances, such research should be relatively reliable, but even then they should be taken with a lot of caution," says Bakić.
He adds that in some countries there are very reliable public opinion surveys and election polls, but that Serbia is far from that.
"There have been cases in our country where polls have been very precise, but in general, over the last thirty years, they have not been particularly reliable. It all depends on the nature of the political system. The more democratic the system and the more political freedoms there are, the easier it is to professionally research public opinion and get relatively accurate results. People often give socially desirable answers - that is, what they think they should say or what they believe the pollster expects to hear. It's a kind of vicious circle that is hard to get out of," he says. Bakic.
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