CEORG July 2002 Omnibus Survey on Evaluation of Economic and Political Situation in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland and the Russian Federation
Economic situation
The latest CEORG opinion research, conducted in July 2002, revealed that a majority of Bulgarians (76,6%), Poles (76,1%), and Lithuanians (61,7%) consider their country’s economy to be in bad shape, while an absolute majority of Hungarians (56,2%) and a relative majority of Russians (44,1%) think that the current economic situation in their country is neither good nor bad. Of the surveyed countries, only in Russia at least 10% of respondents think the economic situation in their country is very good or good. The evaluation of the shape of countries’ economies has not significantly changed since the same questions were asked by CEORG last January.
And will it get any better? The most optimistic are the Hungarians, where equally big groups believe that the situation will get better (37,3%) or will stagnate (37,2%), with only less than 10% believing the situation will get worse. An absolute majority in Lithuania (54,9%), and relative majorities in Russia (47,8%) and Poland (47,4%) believe that the situation will stay the same in the coming year, while only in Bulgaria a relative majority (43,9%) thinks the situation will get even worse. The only significant changes since the January CEORG survey are in Bulgaria, where the amount of people expecting a worsening of the economic situation next year rose by nearly 7%; and in Hungary, where the share of optimists (i.e. those who expect improvement of the economic situation next year) has grown by more than 6%, while the share of those expecting stagnation has dropped by more than 10%, and the share of pessimists increased very slightly (by 2,7%).
Except for Hungary, in all the surveyed countries the economic situation of the households is evaluated better than the economic situation of the country. This phenomenon is significant in Lithuania, and particularly in Poland. Absolute majorities of respondents in Hungary (57,1%) and Lithuania (54,9%) and relative majorities in Russia (47,3%) and Poland (46,1%) consider the economic situation of their household to be neither good nor bad. In Bulgaria, a great majority (62,8%) finds the material conditions of their households bad. In all countries, the prevalent opinion is that the situation will not change next year. In comparison to the situation half a year ago, a slight increase in optimism can be observed in Hungary and Russia, and slight increase in pessimism in Bulgaria.
Evaluation of Government
The worst evaluation of the work of the Government is in Bulgaria where nearly 80% of the respondents think that the effects of Government’s activities are rather or very poor. “When the current Prime Minister came to power, Bulgarians cheered his promises that in the very near future people would witness a notable improvement in their material well-being. The realization of these promises, however, has not yet come true. Instead, what people see is laying off of teachers and military staff, and rising electricity prices”, explains Petar Jivkov, Research Director of Bulgarian MBMD.
Negative evaluation prevails also in Poland and Russia, while in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Lithuania relative majorities of respondents evaluate the work of their Governments positively. Quite significant are the amounts of those that do not know how to evaluate their Government.
Since January, Hungary has registered a significant drop of some 18% of those who are not satisfied with the work of the Government. “These changes could be attributed to the results of the parliamentary elections that were held in May, when the former opposition came to the power”, says Andras Gabos of Hungarian TARKI. Simultaneously the ratio of those without opinion has increased by nearly the same amount. “These results confirm our previous findings that many more Hungarians are not able to give an opinion on the present Government (27,9% of Don’t Knows. It was 22,8% in January, when this Government was in opposition) than in the case with the previous Government (12,3% of Don’t Knows in January, when the Government was in power.)“, continues Gabos.
In Poland, the dissatisfaction with the work of Government has dramatically grown over the last six months (by more than 24%). Dr. Kryzstof Zagorski, Director of CBOS, Poland, has an explanation: “The current Polish Government, formed by a left-farmer coalition in November 2001, has by now exhausted the credit usually given to newly formed Governments. Since the economic situation of the country did not improve as quickly as expected by the public, the Government’s evaluation dropped to the level the previous Government had just before its electoral defeat.”
The work of the parliamentary opposition is in all countries evaluated rather poorly, with significant amounts of those without an opinion.
» CEORG July 2002 Omnibus Survey (pdf-file)
