How many is it going to take?

Here's a big of statistical data from the Ukrainian election. In the last presidential campaign, President Kuchma faced off in the second round against the Communist, Petro Symonenko in the second round. The opposition vote was split between Tymoshenko and Yushchenko, and they basically took themselves out of the running, allowing Symonenko to proceed to the second round. Ukrainians preferred even another 5 years of Kuchma to 5 years with a Communist President, but not by a huge margin - Symonenko got 37.7% to Kuchma's 56.2%.

This time Symonenko was summarily swatted in the first round, he got 5% of the vote, and Moroz, leader of the Socialist party, was able to overtake him. (And good for Moroz. He's probably the most consistent and relentlessly blunt politician in the country. A lefty who talks sense, look for him in 2009 if Yanukovych doesn't steal this election)

Socialism (in this case meaning greater state involvement, a more hesitant approach to relations with Western Europe, and a few more command economy features, theoretically backed up by better social support programs for the elderly) is doing all right, but Communism is dead.

What's even more revealing is the following collection of facts:

• In round one, the Communists got 5% of the total vote, and the "Against All" accounted for 2.0%
• Before round two, Symonenko stated that officially the Communists didn't like either of the two presidential candidates, and told all Communists to vote "Against All".
• In round two, "Against All" voters accounted for 2.3% of all voters.

Unless a highly disproportionate percentage of election fraud involved "Against All" votes, the clear message is this: not even the people voting for the Communists are listening to them.  My guess for why they bother to vote for a party they don't believe in is this: the Communist vote is merely a symbolic way for older Ukrainians to say "we had it better under Communism, and our new state will never regain what we lost then."

I expect most of those Communist voters voted for Yanukovych in round two, because his ideology was better advertised in the media, but more importantly because Yushchenko is a candidate who has pledged to change the government, and they fear change after 1991. (qualification: For this I do not have statistics, just my guesses from subjective conversations with older people here.)

On the topic of fear of change, please take the time to read this very interesting article from the Times of London, in which Jeremy Page  interviewed both a Yushchenko supporter and a Yanukovych supporter here in Kyiv.