At the local "elections" which will be held in April 2010, 34,6% of Belarusian citizens would vote for a candidate- supporter of Lukashenka. Such information is given by the Independent Institute of Socio-Economic and Political Studies (IISEPS), based on the results of the March survey of the current year. At the same time, the willingness to vote for a candidate who opposes the policy of Lukashenka expressed 10% of citizens and another 25.3% said they would support another candidate. 30,1% Belarusians did not make their choices.

These data probably are not the most comforting for the Belarusian opposition. However, if you compare the March study of IISEPS with the study on the eve of the elections in 2006, you will notice a significant decrease of those who want to vote for a candidate-supporter of Lukashenka - in December 2006 there were 49.1% (a decresae in such a way by almost 15%). The number of the willing to vote for the candidate of Lukashenka's opponents, though not significantly, but increased by 2,5% and makes 10% (in December 2006 - 7,5%).

If the Belarusian election ballots were counted, according to IISEPS, the party opposition candidates together would collect 19.4% of votes. However, individually neither party will not overcome even 5% barrier.


Naturally, all the losses could be written on the account of the "regime" if there were few of those people who do not know about any candidate. Thus, 76,5% voters say they know nothing about the candidates.


Do we need in this situation wonder that 46,2% citizens say that councils of all levels have absolutely no influence on their lives, while 58% opposed increasing the powers of local councils. The number of voters who hold this idea since the last local campaign increased practically by 15%.


Of course, in many ways a total distrust to the local authorities can be explained by the centralization of the leadership of the country over the past 16 years, but the Democrats should make in this situation conclusions, look for ways to report their views to the society. And yet, even with such a traditional source of information as leaflets and newspapers only every fifth Belarusian faced them. Even if we imagine that all these people found in their mailboxes independent information, the strategic task "to reach everyone" - as analysts of IISEPS point out - still very far from practical realization.

However, the data of IISEPS show that the potential for successful independent media campaign is very large - about 83% citizens of Belarus report that information from official sources either only partially corresponds to the real life, or does not correspond at all.

Thus, the workfront for opposition candidates and the entire democratic community is very big. There is corresponding mood in the society to implement this work that the opposition should essentially use before the presidential campaign of 2011.


Details of these and other results of the survey can be found on page of IISEPSon page of IISEPS.