Sociologist, Chief Researcher of Demostat, Srecko Mihailovic believes that it is very possible that the opposition will win the elections in Belgrade, while, according to his assessment, the power at the level of the Republic will remain in the hands of the Serbian Progressive Party and Aleksandar Vucic.

“In Belgrade, it is very possible for the opposition to win elections. Already on the eve of the elections, it can be claimed that there will be a change of government”, Mihailovic said in the podcast “Half an Hour of Demostat”.

He expresses some reservations about speculation that some parties on the right will approach the ruling parties and thus provide a secure majority.

“Somehow these elections are different and surprises are possible, at least in relation to the current prevailing opinion, there is still time until the final one, there is no need to create discord within the opposition before D-Day”, Mihailovic said.

Mihailovic states that the absence of a large consolidation of all opposition parties has called into question a certain balance that would be established in the parliamentary elections between the ruling parties and the parties in the opposition.

He understands that because of ideology, there was no unification of right-wing parties with parties in the center and left of the center, but points out that this lost the general balance between the ruling and opposition parties.

This indicates that the parliamentary elections will probably be won by the parties that are currently in power, while the rest of the votes will be split between the parties of the center and the left and the parties of the right of the center, Mihailovic explains.

“If there had been a unification of the opposition, it would have been half and half”, he said.

Asked how the results of the elections will be affected by the consolidation of the pro-European opposition, the patching of the ruling parties and the dismantling of the right opposition, Mihailovic said that it seems that the pro-European coalition will be long-lasting and that it seems to be a successful political coalition, at least until the elections and  in the elections.

For him, he says, it was unexpected that the parties to the right of the center did not unite, although some researchers, including the ones from the Demostat, predicted this.

“This has not happened, but it has a more serious consequence”,  he said.

Peoples dissatisfaction is not enough to vote against the government

Stating that public opinion is marked by dissatisfaction with the standard and inflation, Mihailovic points out that this does not result in an automatic change in electoral orientation, and that the dissatisfaction of citizens with small salaries and pensions does not mean that they will vote against the parties in power, but additional political work of the opposition with voters is needed in order to channel it in the right direction.

“The question is whether the opposition parties can take advantage of dissatisfaction or not, whether they are capable enough, whether they have the capacity to politically interpret dissatisfaction with the standard, which is the dominant personal problem of citizens. Dissatisfaction with the standard, the existing government, is not a reason for them to vote for the opposition, additional assurance is needed that with other parties things will move towards better, that we will live better, that we will have better government, less corruption”, Mihailovic said.

Asked whether the opposition is doing this, Mihailovic said that he is afraid not, because the SNS, on the one hand, does not exit the campaign, as the only party that has the capacity and unlimited money and personnel, while the opposition in the inter-election period was more concerned with itself than with potential voters.

“And if we add that their financial and personnel resources are very limited, then we see that, as things stand now, only one party is campaigning and the rest are thinking, waiting for the last minute to do something more serious”, he said.

Mihailovic says that all sides have scored auto-goals, so he cites Bavanishte as one of them, because, as he states, one gets the impression that the SNS worked against itself with this move, while the opposition parties did not do enough to interpret this case, as he says, unthinkable in the normal world, in their favor.

Noting that Demostat estimated the results of the elections in Belgrade last year as following: that the opposition will win 55 percent, and the government 45 percent, and answering the question of why it will not come out with ratings this year, Mihailovic states that Demostat does not have the opportunity to do field research, which is more able to reveal the true opinions of respondents, and that it is not in principle for telephone or online research.

As he explains, the customers also often opt for telephone inquiries, although they know that they are not a reliable source of data, since they are cheaper and faster.

Mihailovic also states that it should be kept in mind that researchers cannot assess the impact of certain issues on electoral orientation.

First of all, it is an electoral pathology, which involves blackmailing voters, buying votes, stealing election results.

Mihailovic says that the impression is that the manifestations of electoral pathology are significantly more common before this election than before the previous research, and that this is one of the reasons why he does not accept the possibility of a more serious prognosis or evaluation of the results of the research.

“We cannot estimate how much pressure will be on citizens to vote in one way or another, how many people at their workplaces are blackmailed to vote, not only in the civil service but also with private citizens”, he said.

Also, foreign policy events, wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, can affect additional intimidation of citizens who in this case opt for a recognizable side, and the constant question is how much events in Kosovo can affect the decisions of citizens.

“In such a situation, to expect that it is possible to make a good forecast is illusory and it is my belief that a good forecast will be the result of a case rather than a good survey”, he states.

Mihailovic says that the question is how valid the opinion polls in Serbia are, i.e. how much confidence can be in the findings.

“My experience indicates that these surveys, when it comes to a society and a country such as Serbia, are very unreliable for some serious assessments of the political situation, for assessments of the ratings of both parties and party leaders, and that we cannot rely heavily on the results. This does not mean that they should not be performed, because they can give some clues if they are done correctly”,s Mihailovic said.

He states that at the beginning, there is a high degree of distrust in the respondents towards the researcher or pollster, which has to do with the political culture in our country, and that respondents want to know who is doing the research, for whom, what is the topic, and to evaluate the interlocutor based on behavior, appearance…

A high degree of distrust is very understandable, given a society in which fear of expressed opinions is one of the dominant moods of citizens.

“We have lived for years in a society where people are afraid to say what they think about certain political issues, especially who they vote for and what they think about the leaders of this or that political party”, he said.

The question is whether this fear is justified or not.

According to Mihailovic, in public opinion polls, the hope of improvement is seen as the dominant mood, while fear is in the second place, because approximately one quarter of respondents opted for this feeling as dominant.

“If we have frightened citizens who are afraid to express their opinion, then it is normal to expect that surveys on a sample of citizens where one quarter are afraid or afraid of expressing an opinion, to be unreliable”, Mihailovic said, adding that in this case the findings are uncertain and can be accepted as indications of the real state of affairs.

He also says that one of the dominant answers to the question of what they are afraid of - the fear of losing a job for themselves or for someone in the family, and that in the state administration.

Asked why field surveys are of better quality than telephone surveys, Mihailovi? cites two key reasons - refusal is significantly less in the case when surveys are done face-to-face, although the rate of rejection during field surveys is very high, and the rate of mistrust in the case of telephone surveys is higher.

However, when it comes to telephone surveys, only 17% of respondents accept to be interviewed, raising questions about the representativeness of the survey and the possibility of ensuring that the sample is random.

In addition to the fear, factors to include are the fact that the time of the interview is not arranged.

Asked about the extent to which opinion polls influence citizens decisions in elections and how citizens should “read” the polls they hear in the media, Mihailovic states that citizens treat surveys the same as politicians - they trust them if they are in favour of their political orientation.