Traditionally, the elderly people are more disciplined from electoral viewpoint and go to vote in a larger number than those of other age categories. In such a situation, the parties of the left have a slight advantage because the turnout of elderly people who are inclined to vote for parties of the left is higher, Anatol Taranu, director of the Institute for Political Research and Constancy “Politicon”, stated for IPN.
According to Anatol Taranu, there are no democratic skills in the electoral environment in Moldova and this seriously affects the electoral state of society for the simple reason that the voters are very receptive to manipulation. “The lack of democracy makes the vote to be volatile. That’s why some of the political parties in the Republic of Moldova during 25 years achieved remarkable results in elections and then disappeared from the political arena,” stated the director of “Politicon”.
Asked to what extent the geopolitical views of the voters will influence the vote and, respectively, the result of the October 30 elections, Anatol Taranu said the geopolitical choice will be a major one, if not the key in the upcoming elections.
As to how informed the voters are and what capacity to discern they have, the director of “Politicon” said the media market of Moldova witnessed a negative change in the recent past. There is a lot of manipulating information, while the voters find it difficult to choose between the many sources of information. The voters in Moldova are unilaterally informed because they do not have the conditions needed to objectively select the information. The electors today are indisputably vulnerable to electoral bribery practices. In a poor country, the voters will always be a target for manipulation by electoral corruption.
According to the expert, the main feature of the voters inside the country is the fact that they get a distorted message, prepared by the media monopolists. As regards the diaspora, the situation is very different. The diaspora in the Western states is more objectively informed than that from the media space of Russia, which is informed unilaterally.
Anataol Taranu added that the main struggle will be between the representative of the oligarchic government and the representatives of the anti-oligarchic front. The voting tendencies of the last elections will repeat if no change to show the consolidation of the anti-oligarchic front occurs. If this front has a common candidate, the tendencies will be diminished.
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The article forms part of the IPN series “Profile of the voter: who votes the President”.