Experts' order: Beware of Election Polls

Political parties in Kosovo have yet to set the date of extraordinary elections, and yet Kosovo's Parliament has not been dissolved, various organisations and companies have engaged in measuring opinion and taking the opinions of citizens which party they prefer to lead the country.

Directors of organizations doing such research consider that polls can be made by many organisations, but they must be reliable and not manipulate with research.

Valon Feta, director of the UBO Consulting Business Development Organisation, told Radio Free Europe that the research issue conducted by various local and international operators is important, but according to him, the credibility of research depends on certain parameters.

“Studies or research published by political parties, civil society organisations, various portals, to be reliable, would have to have a sample of at least one methodology that shows that the study is in reliable parameters, with intervals of credibility and error margins. In other words, the credibility of a study is whether the study is done based on public opinion research protocols”, Feta said.

Noble Halimi analyst, who is also director of the Pristina Institute for Public Opinion Studies, told Radio Free Europe that citizens should know who they should trust.

As he says, anyone's research releases, without an address, are fraud and harmful.

“into opinion very often numbers are being burst on behalf of polls, but without an address it means no author. It is completely unacceptable to use certain numbers without the author of opinion or survey research. So, if we say what is their function or the function of this game, then it should be said that the function is the one who claims to lead the undefined voter towards the vote of that party that the precalculator can win for a simple reason, because usually the undefined voters are voters who, in large majority, expect to vote for the party, which convinced them that it will win”, Halimi said.

Political parties, primarily those that have so far been in the ruling coalition, without exceptions and opposition parties, have started in some form the pre-election campaign. Political subjects have frequented meetings with their electorate.

Several political party leaders in some cases have shown that through various organisations or companies, research has started to see where citizens' preferences are for political parties.

Political parties agree to disperse Parliament anymore August 22nd. That decision came after Ramush Haradinaj resigned from the prime minister's position on July 19th on the day he was invited by the Special Prosecutor to The Hague to be interviewed in the quality of war crimes suspect. / REL/