MINSK, 7 October (BelTA) – Two social research agencies have informed the Central Election Commission (CEC) of Belarus about their willingness to conduct exit polls, CEC Chairperson Lidia Yermoshina said during an online conference hosted by the website of the Belarusian TV and Radio Company on 7 October, BelTA has learned.
“By far not all the accredited public opinion research companies will be conducting exit polls. Only two agencies have requested permission from the Central Election Commission so far. This means that we will have an opportunity to compare their results. I believe that if an exit poll is carried out properly, it will reveal the main trends on the Election Day,” Lidia Yermoshina noted.
BelTA reported earlier that six social research agencies got accredited for conducting opinion polls related to the presidential election in Belarus and the social and political situation in the country with the commission for public opinion polls under the aegis of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. These are the Sociology Institute of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, the Information and Analysis Center under the Belarus President Administration, the Mogilev Institute of Regional Social and Political Studies, the Center for Social and Political Studies of the Belarusian State University, the Youth Laboratory of Social Studies of the Belarusian Committee of Youth Organizations, and the Institute for Comparative Social Studies Eurasian Barometer. The last one is registered in Austria.
According to the information provided to BelTA, Eurasian Barometer representatives will arrive in Belarus to conduct exit polls in the near future. For their part, specialists of the Youth Laboratory of Social Studies noted that they have plans to collect data from 308 polling stations to ensure a margin of error of plus or minus 5%. At least two exit poll takers will be working at each polling site. As a rule, these are a man and a woman. They will be submitting the data they collect to the managers working at larger polling sites. The poll takers will start working at 7h45. The results are expected to be released after 20h00 on 11 October.
CEC Chairperson Lidia Yermoshina said earlier that exit polls are a traditional practice in Belarus. At the same time, the CEC itself does not commission exit polls and does not interfere in the process. “To conduct such surveys, an agency needs to get the appropriate accreditation from the commission under the Council of Ministers which operates at the National Academy of Sciences,” Lidia Yermoshina explained. The agencies wishing to hold exit polls should prove that their specialists have extensive knowledge of methods of opinion polling. Besides, the specialists are required to wear badges and have relevant documents on them.
