this is from december but i haven't seen much recent polling i can trust (the kyiv post is state owned). what i want to get across is a ukrainian displeasure with the far right and how it may affect elections.
- In a contest between Yanukovych and Klitschko, 36 percent would choose Klitschko, 20 percent Yanukovych, 13 percent don’t know, 18 percent against all and 12 percent would not vote.
- In a contest between Yanukovych and Yatsenyuk, 26 percent would choose Yatsenyuk, 22 percent Yanukovych, 23 percent against all, 14 percent don’t know, and 12 percent would not vote.
-In a contest between Yanukovych and Tyahnybok, 24 percent would choose Yanukovych, 18 percent Tyahnybok, 27 percent against all, 16 percent don’t know, and 13 percent would not vote.
ok. so, yatsenyuk and yanukovych represent the mainstream left and right. klitschko is the "new party" which gets the novelty vote. tyahnybok is the fascist.
so, ukrainians are saying that:
new party > establishment > fascists.
that would be true most places in most circumstances, turmoil or not.
now, what happens when you put yatsenyuk in coalition with tyahnybok as is currently the case? first, you're going to get some discomfort, because svoboda is too right-wing. as unpopular as yanukovych may have been, he'd still win a plurality against the far right. because they want to outlaw abortion and pass restrictive language laws and build weapons programs.....stuff that's not popular anywhere....
the questions that need to be answered are:
1) the coalition is clearly going to be a factor, how much of a factor is this? does it reduce the center-right vote by more than 5%? 'cause, if so, that might swing the election to yanukovych.
2) do these people move back to yanukovych as the known establishment candidate or take a chance on klitschko as the new party?
see, establishment voters are establishment. they pick the devil they know.
what i'm getting at is that i don't think that the center-right coalition has a chance. that is to say that the only thing that is certain about the may election is that the party that just seized power will lose it. it's consequently very difficult to talk about the new parliament as being representative of anybody except victoria nuland.
so, that makes it a two-way race between yanukovich' party and the german-backed kiltschko, which might seem like a clear choice between europe and russia...
...except it might not be. it might have more to do with local social policies. there's still a left-right component to this, and that might be the more important concern.
what that means is that if you're the russians you wait until the shit clears itself out. there might be no need to remove the government by force. they might simply be voted out.
on the other hand, the elections might not be fair, in which case we can expect another uprising - this time against the existing government.
so at the very least, we can expect the russians to wait until may. the situation on the ground will then provide a new set of challenges to react to.