The sociologists of the Razumkov Center for Economic and Political Studies decide to relax at the end of a hard election season and have some fun on the eve of April Fool’s Day. The outcome, however, made some people tense. The question the sociologists asked sounded quite innocent: “Whom of the following candidates would you vote for if the election of the Ukrainian President were held this Sunday?” Mikhail Gorbachov turned out to be an outsider of the presidential race receiving only 1.2 percent of the vote. George Bush did no better - the all-American favorite was supported by only 2.3 of voters in Ukraine. While the rest of the results proved predictable: Leonid Kuchma and the Belarusian president Aleksandr Lukashenko both received 3.7 percent of the vote. The Progressive Socialists leader Natliya Vitrenko did better being favored by 5.6 percent of the vote. The chances of the United Social Democrats leader Viktor Medvedchuk turned out to be even better than hers. His international presidential rating was as high as 8.3 percent of the vote. The Ukrainian Communist leader Petro Symonenko won third place being with 12.7 percent of the votes. While Russian president Vladimir Putin (19 percent) and former Ukrainian prime minister Viktor Yushchenko (27.4 percent) made it to the second round. May be this is why the Russians so fear Yushchenko. Spoken in jest, April Fool’s Day is soon after all.

Now, joking aside. The Razumkov Center sociologists, who polled two thousand respondents during the period of March 23-27, 2002, asked them the following question: “Where does most external influence on the election campaign in Ukraine come from?” 27.4 percent of the respondents have no opinion on this; 22.7 percent believe no serious external influence is exerted on Ukraine; 2.9 percent suspect nobody knows who; 5.8 percent believe the EU to be the bearer of such influence; 15.5 percent feel the “hand of Moscow”. While 25.7 of Ukrainians are convinced that the USA exerts the most influence. Without doubt such an assessment is the direct result of the anti-American campaign that the pro-government parties, the For a United Ukraine bloc and the United Social Democratic Party, have launched in the national media, which they control. The predicted reaction of the population gives credit to the professionalism of the Russian political PR specialists, who have arranged the plan of campaign, but no credit to the population, which does not want to reflect. But then, we were able think during the Soviet times when we were masters of the skill of reading between the lines. Now we have irrevocably lost this skill, a loss considered the indubitable gain of democracy and independence.

Now, on the point of democracy. Neither of the opposition political parties was able to implement its right to broadcast on TV their anti-advertising reels. At the same time, each of the opposition parties was exposed to the pressure of negative information, and the owners of the national TV channels achieved a certain result.

According to the Razumkov Center forecasts, the Our Ukraine bloc which was the major target might lose up to one sixth of its supporters. The Yuliya Tymoshenko bloc that according to the government’s plan was to be withdrawn from the election race benefited from the adverse advertising as it only reinforced its election positions. It is not impossible that the number of the supporters of the Communist party will increase. It is not worth commenting on the impact of the criticism on the Socialist Party. The party and its leader are passed over in silence. That is why the Razumkov Center experts believe their fate to be still undecided.

At the same time, the experts do not tend to think that conquering the opposition will radically help the pro-government parties and the parties of the pro-government opposition. This looks rather dog-in-the-manger. It is not important, as they both have to make a choice in the last round and it looks like the government would support Putin rather then Yushchenko.