Month: July 2008

We’ve had two new polls in the last week here, each of them showing a radically different performance by the two top-tier parties. On 10 July we’ve had a Nimamedia poll (commissioned my Mladina weekly), which more or less echoed results of most previous polls by different pollsters (i.e.: Social democrats take the top spot, Janša’s SDS comes in second, while LDS, Zares and occasionaly the nationalists battle it out for bronze).

However, only a day later a poll a government-commissioned poll done by Parsifal Group showed a radically different result – SDS taking the top spot with 20,4 percent of the decided vote and SD coming in second with a “mere” 13,2 percent. Somewhat indicatively, though, both polls are surprisingly similar in recording the vote of the smaller parties. Call me paranoid, but I smell a rat

Anyways, neglecting the fact that we are dealing with a poll made and paid for by the government, two things become almost immediately visible:

One: even a government poll projects that a totally left-wing coalition (SD, LDS, Zares, DeSUS) will get as much votes (27%) as a totally right-wing coalition (SDS, SLS, NSi, SNS – 27,3). If we add Lipa and its 0,8 percent of the vore to the left-wing bloc, just for argument’s sake (I’m not saying they are left-wing), then the left bloc prevails again.

Two: According to government’s own poll, repeating the election result of 2004 (i.e.: forming a winning coalition) can only be possible with Zmago Jelinčič’s nationalists onboard. Then and only then can the existing coalition (SDS, NSi, SLS, DeSUS) with the addition of SNS form a rather comfortable if uneasy majority.

All of the above, however, must be taken cum grano salis. Polls commisioned by the government have a tendency to skew reality much beyond the acceptable and one could safely venture to say that the reality is much grimmer for the government of Janez Janša

Pengovsky’s projection: Despite the short relief the lates poll might provide to for the right bloc, it should actually sound general quarters, red alert, defcon 1 and whatever states of emergency there are. Namely, if your own pollsters can’t plausibly put you well ahead in the polls, then nothing will. So we will quite possibly see the Prime Minister venture more and more into the nationalistic and overly-populistic field of rhetoric, trying to chip off SNS as many votes as possible. However, one extremely undesired sideefect is Zmago Jelinčič thus becoming ever more acceptable for the centrist vote. Should Janša decide to go down that road and co-opt Jelinčič and his voters, he will pay dearly in a future not very far. But the main question remains: is the tide turning? Not for now. When other polls corroborate results of Pasifal, then we can start talking….

Elections 2008 Badge: Will be updaed during the day. The right bloc takes 56 percent of the vote this time around.

Poll data: If anyone feels like it, here is an MS Excel file complete with all the polling data and charts. It includes almost every published poll from February ’08 until present.

Yesterday I hinted at more possible arrests as elections near. You don’t actually have to be a rocket scientist to figure that one out, but what it is interesting, though, is the fact that these arrests have little or no effect on public opinion polls. Or don’t they? If one looks at it from the perspective of an increase in public support for the rulling party then arrests (or more broadly speaking – the war against tycoons) have failed to deliver. But what if we are looking at it from the wrong perspective?

A sight many would love to see

Janez Janša and his SDS won the 2004 elections by a handsome majority mostly on a ticket of radical socio-economic reforms combined with good old anti-communism and xenophobia. He also promised to achieve a lot of very specific goals (one of them being the regional legislation). However, he failed to deliver on most counts. He failed to deliver to his own electorate. Pengovsky knows for a fact that a lot of his voters are down right disappointedd at today’s lack of a revolutionary fervour which Janša radiated just prior to 2004 elections. So what if Janša is not really looking for a bump in polls but is rather trying to keep his existing polls from going into a freefall? His and his people’s persitency in rounding up the usual suspects and putting them behind bars – even is only ever so briefly – suggests that these moves are yielding political results. And if no result is visible, it must be by design. War on tycoons and accompanying arrests are not meant to increase Janša’s popularity, but to prevent it from decreasing any further. This also suggests further arrests are highly likely. The question of course is – who’s next.

The obvious answer would be Laško Brewery CEO and majority stake-holder Boško Šrot. In Janša’s mind he undoubtedly has a lot to answer for, since the two got along really nice at first but it turned out that Boško was playing an angle and snatched Delo newspaper from Janša’s hands, depriving the PM of a very handy PR tool – and making 1,6 bln euros in the process while acquiring Laško Brewery.

However, Boško Šrot is only a secondary target in this case. Sure, he is worth a truckload of greenbacks and people in Slovenia generally hate other people who do better than themselves but Boško Šrot and his Laško got where they are now more or less thanks to politics and certain politicians. Janša was among them until 2007 and he knows that if pressed against the wall Boško Šrot will probably start oozing information at an accelerated speed. And secondly, if Janša has Šrot arrested, he must also have them arrest Igor Bavčar of Istrabenz. And that will never happen as he ows Bavčar big time since the latter headed the movement which eventually got Janša out of prison in 1988.

Remember, from Boštjan Penko onwards you don’t really need evidence to lock someone up. All you need is a willing police and a willing state prosecution. Both of which are availabe to the PM in large quantities. So, if not Šrot, who then?

Why, Ljubljana mayor Zoran Janković. He is roundly hated by Janša’s supporters as a model tycoon, who not only made millions in supposedly dogdy deals, but also entered politics where he continually refuses to play ball. Janković is trying to position himself directly up against Janša and he is getting quite good at it. Not that he is very damaging politically to Janša at the moment, but that might change in the future. Furthermore, by locking up a sitting politician, the PM would also send a very strong message to anyone who might be thinking about jumping ship – this is what will happen if you don’t do as I say.

Locking up Zoran Janković – even if just for a night – would send Janša’s party into a mass multiple orgasm and since more arrests are inevitable, the Mayor of the City of Ljubljana is high on the lists of possible arrests. This was corroborated by another media company whose people came to the same conclusion independently, as well as (indirectly) by a source within Janša’s party.

The question is – will Janša have the balls to do it?