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DE RUEHBW #2061/01 3561030
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R 221030Z DEC 06
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INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 BELGRADE 002061 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PREL KDEM SR
SUBJECT: BIG BLOC OF SERBIA'S DEMOCRATIC VOTERS 
STILL UNDECIDED ABOUT ELECTIONS 
 
SUMMARY 
------- 
¶1.  (SBU) Early election forecasts from Serbia's 
major polling agencies suggest that the 
ultranationalist Radical and Socialist parties 
have little chance of forming a government alone 
after the 21 January elections.  Pollsters 
indicate that President Tadic's Democratic Party 
(DS) and PM Kostunica's Democratic Party of 
Serbia (DSS) will be in a position to form the 
core of a democratic government, if they can put 
aside their differences. The more than 20 percent 
of certain voters who have yet to decide for whom 
to vote are ripe for the picking by democratic 
parties, but have not responded to the DS's still 
somewhat unfocused campaign. G17 Plus and the 
upstart Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) have been 
the fastest out of the blocks, but face tougher 
sledding once the DS and DSS start throwing a lot 
of money into their campaigns after New Year's. 
We have not seen any electoral bounce for the 
democrats from the PfP invitation.  End Summary. 
 
THE EARLY NUMBERS 
----------------- 
¶2.  (U) Serbia's most reliable polling agencies-- 
the Center for Free Elections and Democracy 
(CeSID), Medium Gallup, Scan, and Strategic 
Marketing (SMMRI)--have recently conducted public 
opinion surveys that provide a somewhat clearer 
picture of the prospects of the main contenders 
in the 21 January parliamentary elections. The 
following are their current survey results 
measuring the parties' percentage of support from 
determined voters: 
 
PARTY   CeSID  Gallup  Scan  SMMRI 
 
SRS                  30      30     28    32 
DS                   27      25     25    27 
DSS/NS               20      19     17    17 
G17 Plus              8       8      5     8 
LDP-led coalition     4       5      9     5 
SPS                   4       6      4     5 
SPO                   4       3      3     3 
 
¶3. (SBU) Medium Gallup chief Srbobran Brankovic, 
Scan chief Milka Puzigaca, and Strategic 
Marketing head Srdjan Bogosavljevic all 
complained to Poloffs about the manipulation of 
their agencies' polling data in the press. 
Puzigaca alleged a malicious campaign to 
discourage voters inclined toward the DS by 
inflating SRS and DSS party ratings and also to 
demotivate LDP-inclined voters by falsely 
suggesting that the LDP was unlikely to pass the 
five-percent election census. The opposite 
motivation may have been behind a recent press 
article in the Blic daily citing G17 Plus ratings 
of 11 percent, a clear inflation of its current 
popularity.  Brankovic also blamed journalists' 
limited capacity to interpret and weigh raw 
polling data, which he says may have accounted 
for some press articles that falsely cited Medium 
Gallup polls placing the DSS coalition ahead of 
the DS. (A DSS insider close to the PM cited to 
us on 12/20 the DSS' belief that a Medium Gallup 
poll placed it ahead of the DS.) 
 
TURNOUT AND UNDECIDED VOTERS 
---------------------------- 
¶4.  (U) Bogosavljevic and CeSID Executive 
Director Zoran Lucic both project that at least 
3.7 million voters, or 55 percent of the 
electorate, will go to the polls, only a marginal 
decline from the turnout in Serbia's two previous 
parliamentary elections in 2000 and 2003. 
Brankovic and Puzigaca, however, told Poloffs 
that only 47-50 percent of the electorate is 
virtually certain to vote, with a higher turnout 
dependent on weather conditions and, perhaps most 
of all, the success of party campaigns to 
motivate their voters. Puzigaca was especially 
concerned that scheduling the elections on 21 
January--the last day of Serbian children's 
winter break--will disproportionately hurt the DS 
and the LDP coalition because their more urban, 
educated voters may not return home from vacation 
in time to vote. As a result, she believes 
predicting the turnout for these elections is a 
fool's errand, particularly since the series of 
 
BELGRADE 00002061  002 OF 004 
 
 
holidays that Serbia will have from New Year's to 
election day makes capturing a reliable sample of 
voters during that time virtually impossible. 
 
¶5.  (U) Strategic Marketing and Medium Gallup 
assess that around 20 percent of certain voters 
still have not decided which party to support, 
while CeSID's survey indicates that more than 
one-third of likely voters remain undecided. Most 
undecided voters are strongly inclined toward 
parties in Serbia's so-called democratic bloc, 
which underscores the importance of these 
parties' campaigns in getting out the vote, they 
said. Moreover, the bloc of democratic voters 
that Bogosavljevic defines as "progressive" are 
more undecided and more prone to abstention than 
those voters he defines as "conservative 
democrats," who gravitate especially toward DSS. 
This relatively high number of undecided voters 
lends considerable unpredictability to the 
elections, since the campaigns of the biggest 
parties are not likely to go into high gear until 
after New Year's. In essence, the main campaign 
battles are likely to be waged in an intense week 
starting on 9 January, just after Orthodox 
Christmas weekend, and ending with the 
preelection silence on 18 January. 
 
DSS YET TO PEEL OFF POPULIST-ORIENTED RADICAL 
VOTERS 
--------------------------------------------- ---- 
¶6.  (SBU) Lucic views the efforts of the populist 
coalition led by Prime Minister Kostunica's DSS 
to win away nationalist-oriented voters from the 
camp of the Serbian Radical Party (SRS) as the 
central battle of the election campaign. The DSS 
and its main coalition partner New Serbia (NS) 
hope that Radical leader Vojislav Seselj's 
efforts from The Hague to recommit the party 
leadership to his Greater Serbia platform and to 
mute the party's less strident voices will enable 
them to siphon off populist votes from the SRS. 
NS leader Velimir Ilic in particular is 
reportedly going into Radical villages throughout 
Serbia carrying the unambiguous message that the 
DSS-NS coalition will hold onto power after 
elections and direct future capital investments 
only to those municipalities that demonstrate 
fealty to them in the elections. DSS insiders 
have told us that a major battle against the SRS 
for nationalist votes is shaping up throughout 
Sumadija. 
 
¶7.  (SBU) The jury is still out as to whether the 
DSS can significantly steal away support from the 
SRS, which retains the strongest base of 
determined voters. Strategic Marketing's 
Bogosavljevic indicates that 32 percent of 
determined voters and 35 percent of likely voters 
support the Radicals, while Lucic judges that the 
SRS could win as much as 38 percent of the vote 
if turnout is low. Both Bogosavlejvic and 
Puzigaca told Poloffs that the SRS's voters 
remain loyal and determined to vote, despite the 
party's still-dormant campaign and the DSS's 
nationalist pandering. 
 
¶8.  (SBU) The pollsters disagree somewhat about 
the DSS's overall election prospects. Medium 
Gallup results suggest that support for the DSS 
coalition could top out at 20 percent and is 
likely, if anything, to decline as elections draw 
nearer. CeSID's Lucic also believes that the 
DSS's efforts to appeal to its national- 
conservative base and to soft SRS supporters--and 
its affiliation with crude populists like Ilic 
and especially Dragan "Palma" Markovic--can only 
win the party a limited number of additional 
votes because at the same time it will lose a 
portion of its urban, educated bloc of voters 
either to the DS or to abstention. Puzigaca and 
Bogosavljevic, however, assess that Ilic offers 
significant potential upside to Kostunica, giving 
his DSS access to votes in NS strongholds in 
central Serbia that it would otherwise not have. 
Puzigaca also points out that the DSS has managed 
to increase its number of certain voters by 17 
percent since September, probably because of the 
adoption of the constitution and Kostunica's 
relentless Kosovo-related rhetoric. This increase 
is almost identical to the increase in Strategic 
 
BELGRADE 00002061  003 OF 004 
 
 
Marketing polling after the adoption of the 
constitution in the percentage of voters who see 
Serbia moving "on the right track," which 
suggests potentil traction for Kostunica's 
"national unity" messge. A close advisor to 
President Tadic expressedworry to us earlier 
this week, however, that theDSS strategy of 
targeting the nationalist vote pu it in a strong 
position to surpass the DS. 
 
D STRUGGLING TO MOTIVATE VOTERS 
-------------------------------- 
¶9.  (SBU) Support for Serbian President Tadic's 
Democratic Party actually outpaces that of the 
SRS in Scan's survey of the electorate as a 
whole, although the SRS enjoys an edge among 
certain voters. The DS therefore stands to gain 
significantly with a higher turnout. All four 
pollsters agree, however, that the DS's failure 
so far to promote a clear and concrete campaign 
message is only serving to confuse and demotivate 
its potential voters. Brankovic told Poloffs that 
the numbers are unambiguous: Tadic should be 
aggressively highlighting the differences between 
the Democrats and the Radicals and projecting a 
clear idea of what a DS-led government would 
offer.  Instead, Tadic continues to run as 
President and to make state visits abroad at the 
expense of a sustained campaign at home, and 
carefully downplays the differences between the 
DS and his likely DSS coalition partner. Tadic's 
plan to "allow" Kostunica to be prime minister 
again, even if the DS wins more votes, is the 
worst-kept secret in the campaign and is sapping 
morale in the party.  We have not seen any 
electoral bounce for the democrats from the PfP 
invitation.  At a 12/20 focus group observed by 
Emboff, not a single one of the ten respondents 
was aware of the PFP invitation or could describe 
what PFP is. 
 
¶10.  (SBU) Bogoslavjevic (who is the main DS 
pollster and works closely with IRI and NDI) 
believes that the DS could even outpoll the 
Radicals, given Tadic's personal popularity and 
the contradictions in the DSS coalition.  Our 
sources, however, continue to note fractiousness 
within the DS, with the campaign effort 
resembling Tadic's dysfunctional personal office 
and its duplicative titles, overlapping 
functions, and a preference for splashy spin over 
work in the trenches.  The result is a lack of 
message discipline. Marko Djurisic, head of the 
DS's executive committee, admitted to Poloffs 
that the party is struggling to promote a 
coherent party program and risks confusing voters 
as it tries to broaden its appeal beyond its 
existing voting body. 
 
¶11.  (SBU) The coalition led by Cedomir 
Jovanovic's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) stands 
to gain the most from a flaccid DS campaign. The 
LDP has the greatest potential in Vojvodina, 
where Puzigaca says a small number of DS voters 
were disenchanted by the party's support for the 
constitution, which granted the province very 
restricted autonomy. Recent Scan polling results, 
in fact, show the LDP coalition with 15 percent 
support in Vojvodina. All pollsters agree that 
the LDP's biggest obstacle is convincing 
sympathetic voters that their votes for LDP will 
not be wasted, a perception which could become a 
self-fulfilling prophecy. In response, its 
coalition cleverly seized on published Scan 
polling results showing the LDP at 9 percent, 
with campaign posters promising that "9% is only 
the beginning." Scan, however, is the only major 
polling agency showing the LDP coalition 
definitively above the 5 percent election hurdle, 
with the other pollsters identifying a base of 
180,000 voters firmly in the LDP camp but not yet 
enough undecided voters inclined to vote for them 
who could put them over the hump. 
 
THREE OTHER PARTIES VYING TO CROSS ELECTION 
CENSUS 
--------------------------------------------- ---- 
- 
¶12.  (SBU) Only G17 Plus is safely above the 
margin of error for crossing the five-percent 
threshold in Medium Gallup and Strategic 
 
BELGRADE 00002061  004 OF 004 
 
 
Marketing surveys. G17 Plus was the fastest party 
out of the blocks, but both Brankovic and 
Bogosavljevic expect the party's numbers to 
decline closer to the election census once the 
bigger parties start investing a lot more money 
into their campaigns. Brankovic still expects G17 
Plus in the end to cross the threshold because 
party leader Mladjan Dinkic is mounting the most 
energetic campaign, the party is flush with 
money, and the powerhouse US election consulting 
firm Greenberg Research has helped the party 
prepare an effective, focused campaign strategy. 
 
¶13. (SBU) Longtime nemeses SPS and SPO are the 
only other parties that appear to have a shot at 
crossing the five percent census. Most pollsters 
rate the SPS's chances of squeaking past the 
threshold as good because the party avoided 
fracturing after its recent party congress and 
has a stable voting body that is certain to make 
it to the polls. The SPO, on the other hand, is 
very much a long shot, suffering even more than 
the LDP from the perception that a vote for the 
party is a wasted vote. Strategic Marketing and 
Medium Gallup, meanwhile, separately estimate 
that the minority Hungarian, Bosniak, and 
Albanian parties--which only have to cross a 
"natural" threshold of 13,000-16,000 votes, 
depending on turnout--will together secure 7-9 
seats in the next parliament. 
 
COMMENT 
------- 
¶14.  (SBU) These results from Serbia's most 
respectable pollsters indicate that it is 
unlikely that the ultranationalist SRS and SPS 
would be able to form a government on their own 
after elections. At the same time, the early 
polling numbers suggest that the combination of 
an unfavorable date for elections, the DS's 
muddled, uninspiring election campaign, and the 
DSS's populist pandering pose the risk of 
discouraging a huge bloc of democratically- 
inclined Serbian voters. Conversely, in a best- 
case scenario, the failure of both the DS and DSS 
campaigns to elicit support beyond their bases or 
even to avoid estranging parts of their voting 
bodies could help G17 and LDP cross the election 
census and thereby swell the ranks of pro- 
Western, reform-oriented parties in the next 
parliament. 
 
POLT