Nearly half of the respondents of the Public Opinion Barometer (POB) for November 2017 said they trust no Moldovan politician. 86.8% of those surveyed consider the Republic of Moldova is not governed according to the people’s will. This is by 17% more compared with the previous survey carried out in spring. Also, 76.3% of the respondents believe the elections in Moldova are not free and fair, which is up 20% on the previous poll.
The Public Opinion Barometer was presented by the Institute for Public Policy (IPP) in a news conference at IPN on December 14. Answering the open question: “Which is the political personality in Moldova who you trust the most?”, 49.5% of those polled said they do not trust any politician, while 8.7% could not answer this question. Almost 20% trust Igor Dodon, slightly over 8% Maia Sandu, 2.5% Andrei Nastase, 1.8% Vladimir Voronin, while 1.7% Ilan Shor. Pavel Filip and Vlad Plahotniuc are trusted by 1.5% of the respondents, while Renato Usatyi by 1%.
Asked who they consider is the most corrupt politician, 32.6% of the respondents answered “Vlad Plahotniuc”. According to the IPP director Arcadie Barbarosie, this is the highest percentage scored so far by a politician by this question. Igor Dodon comes second with 4.9%, while Vlad Filat ranks third with 2.6%. Almost 44% of those polled answered “I don’t know”. “This is another indicator showing that the citizens do not really know the politicians, if they didn’t know to name them,” stated Arcadie Barbarosie.
The POB shows that if elections were held next Sunday, 46% of those questioned would definitely take part in these. 20.5% said they are not sure, 14.2% said they would most probably go and vote, while about 14% said they would rather not go to vote.
Asked what party they would support, 26% of the respondents said they would vote for the Party of Socialists (-8% compared with spring poll), while 12.3% for the Party “Action and Solidarity” (-12%). The other parties would not pass the election threshold: Party “Platform Dignity and Truth” – 3.4%, Democratic Party – 2.8%, Party of Communists – 2.5%, Our Party – 2.4%. Less than 2% of those interviewed would vote for other parties.
As regards the work of Igor Dodon, the POB shows 27.5% of the respondents consider the President represents their interests to a small extent, while 35.3% - not at all. As to the work of Parliament, one in ten respondents (11.3%) believe the legislative body represents their interests to a great or very great extent, 31.5% - to a small extent, while 50.6% - not at all.
Some 77.4% of those surveyed said things in Moldova go wrong. This is by 13% more compared with the previous poll. The people are mainly dissatisfied with what the administration does in a number of areas, in particular with salaries, pensions, jobs, corruption fighting and living standards.
The survey was conducted between November 18 and December 5, 2017 and covered a sample of 1 113 persons older than 18 from 82 communities of Moldova, except for the Transnistrian region. The margin of sampling error is +/- 2.8%.
