Three major sociological offices will conduct the joint exit-polls during Ukrainian parliamentary election

Counting the votes during Ukrainian election

On the day of Ukrainian parliamentary election, on 28 October 2012, three major Ukrainian sociologist offices will conduct the joint exit-polls. There will be Democratic Initiatives Fund, Kyiv International Institute of Sociology and Ukrainian Razumkov Center of economic and political research among them.

According to the statement of Iryna Bekeshkina, Director of the Democratic Initiatives Fund, the management of project and financial and media management of the exit-poll as well will be conducted by the Democratic Initiatives Fund. The interviews will be held by Kyiv International Institute of Sociology and Ukrainian Razumkov Center of economic and political research.

It is planned to announce the results of those exit-polls three times. First announcement is expected to be made right after the polling stations will be closed at 8 p.m. Kyiv time. It will be the information collected two hours before the polls will be closed. The next announcement will be made at 11 p.m., three hours after the closure of the polling stations. The new details from the stations where the work will continue before the polling stations’ closure will be added to the previous information. The third announcement together with detailed report is planned to be made after a week, when the data of the paper questionnaires will be received.

These exit-polls will be totally open, fair and transparent both during the process and in the results. In addition to that the exit-polls will be conducted only in the two majority regions which will face the tensest political struggle during the election. The sociologists decided it will be better to concentrate on the nationwide district.

The conducting of exit-polls will cost nearly $ 130,000. The National exit-poll-2012 will be supported by the International Fund Renaissance, the Matra Program of Netherlands’ embassy in Ukraine, the National Fund for Democracy Support, European Union and others.

Vladimir Paniotto, Director of Kyiv International Institute of Sociology stated that exit-polls are planned to be held at nearly 300 polling stations. 16,500 respondents are planned to be interviewed. It is expected that two-three persons will work at every polling station; their total number will be about 700. All of them will pass the special training before.