Political Activity Indicators in Public Opinion Surveys

Abstract

Indicators of regular public opinion surveys are analysed in the aspect of political activity. The main attention of analysis was focused on the indicators of voting preferences ‘will not vote’, ‘don’t know’ and ‘no answer’, also on frequencies of mentioning popular politicians in an open question, neutral answers to questions about trust in President and Seimas. The empirical basis of the paper is surveys conducted in 1989–2020 and the joined file of eleven surveys in 2019. The analysis of the data shows the difference in the answers ‘don’t know who to vote for’ before and after the elections: after the elections a considerably bigger part of respondents have their opinion on voting preferences. In an open question ‘Which politicians, in your opinion, best represent your interests?’, the highest result was fixed in 1989–1990, in the time of the highest political activity in society, and the lowest was fixed in the 20s. The neutral evaluations of President are in a close connection with positive attitudes to this institution and the neutral evaluations of Seimas are in a close relation with negative attitudes to this institution.