aramazd ([info]aramazd) wrote,
  • Location: Yerevan
  • Mood: optimistic

First impressions of the elections process on the 12th

So, I can make some observations as of 18:00, May 12th:

1. People are really active: I guess around 20:00 the actual percentage will reach 80%. This having said, one should be aware that the nominal number of electorate reported by the Police exceeds the actual number of voters by around 40%. But the voters as of now are really active, which is in fact a very positive factor in general, and for the opposition, in particular.

2. The opposition parties, both the "so called" ones, as well as the real ones, are very poorly organized in their efforts to monitor the electons process. The best among the parties are: Heritage and Impeachment. This refers to the whole Armenia. The parties like People's Party of Armenia, Republic Party, New Times party, United Labour Party, National Unity, and National Democratic Party have very limited representation/number of proxies in precincts. :( This is really sad, but it indicates that our traditional opposition is used to doing nothing. Of course, some of the abovementoned parties have received "guarantees from the authorities that they will "pass" the needed 5% threshold. So, I guess they thought no additional efforts are needed (this is particularly true of National Dem. party, HZhK and National Unity.

3. Heritage party and Impeachment bloc are the leaders of the voting in Yerevan, according to an exit poll conducted by Radio Hai through SMS. But besides the exit poll, informal exit polls among voters, conducted by many of my friends, showed that the leaders are the mentioned party and the bloc. Now, what the official figures will look like, we will know in a couple of hours.But at this moment I would like to commend our efforts, efforts of the Impeachment bloc that we made during the last 4 months - the result is astonishing! And I am sure, if at least 3-4 parties in Armenia would have done the same, the situation in Armenia would be totally different, as well the people's attitude toward our traditional opposition.

4. So far, so good...
Tags: elections, impeachment

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  • 12 comments

[info]ogostos

May 12 2007, 13:16:57 UTC 5 years ago

i guess the turnouts are really astonishing. I actually had to queue to vote - well, this was a "round" Armenian queue, of course, but still, it took about 15-20 minutes to get through.

It IS a positive sign, isn't it.

[info]aramazd

May 12 2007, 18:23:30 UTC 5 years ago

Yes, it was really a positive sign, and it was also positive that the official figure for the turnout was really rather low - around 60%. This is not bad.

What was REALLY bad was the scope of bribes yesterday and today especially in marzes... :( The info about the scope of the crime is depressing...

We will gather at the Liberty Square tomorrow starting from 14:00.

[info]gangur

May 12 2007, 17:09:30 UTC 5 years ago

How was SMS used as an exit poll?

[info]aramazd

May 12 2007, 18:25:52 UTC 5 years ago

Every party/bloc had a code corresponding to its number in the ballot (say, Impeachment was D9). Every phone no. could send only one SMS to 1041 with the respective code.

[info]gangur

May 12 2007, 19:54:35 UTC 5 years ago

That's really interesting. I wonder how accurate it is.

- they'd be not including anyone without a mobile (elderly, poor, etc.)
- but it does have a "more anonymous" feeling to it than actually asking people on the street... well, unless people have a general sense that their mobile usage could be traced to them and/or tracked by someone.

Anonymous

May 13 2007, 04:40:50 UTC 5 years ago

Margins of error

it's been a while since my economics and statistics days, but usually 1067 is a number that is regarded among researchers as a good sample representative of population with 3 percent margin of error. The next best number

There were 584 SMS polls. In statistics a poll with a random sample of 1,067 people has margin of sampling error of 3% for the estimated percentage of the whole population. A 3% margin of error means that 95% of the time the procedure used would give an estimate within 3% of the percentage to be estimated. The next best number is 600 with 4% margin of error, which is closest to this sample.

You can calculate "Margins of Error" and "Confidence Intervals" with many online calculators. Like this one: http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm

I've calculated 4.06% margin of error with this SMS sample... which in theory means that if Impeachment got 23% of SMS votes (together with Republic and New Times), one should also say: plus or minus 4.05%.

Statistics is a strange thing. But it predicts results pretty acurately. Often by polling 2401 people one an get very acurate results representing the whole population.

BUT... as you said there is the problem of what they call "Bias" in statistics... things like who uses SMS??? I mean my Mom has a mobile but she doesn't know how to send SMS... so there is already the question of age group representation. Another issue is that while 1 million people are said to have mobiles in Armenia, they are mostly in Yerevan and these numbers don't represent the poor people in marzes, who, according to reports were queueing up in Gumri and Lori for 5000 drams which were handed out by Republican HHK and Bargavatch

I talk more about these in our website at http://azat.wordpress.com

all the best
Sasuntsi Anarchist

[info]gangur

May 13 2007, 16:05:34 UTC 5 years ago

Re: Margins of error

I'm in a statistics class right now and all I can do is an ANOVA. :)

Thanks for the info!

[info]kornelij

May 12 2007, 19:35:35 UTC 5 years ago

sms poll is nonsense. You can send a 1000 sms-s and 900 of the will get a children.

Mazd, I think in Yerevan you will get a good numbers :)

[info]aramazd

May 13 2007, 19:28:07 UTC 5 years ago

he-he: i guess we had around 5%, rally. Like Heritage had more than 10% for sure. But we did not ultimately "get" those votes because of the decision of the authorities...

Anyway. The elections'07 were a masterpiece of fraud!!!

Anonymous

May 13 2007, 05:07:32 UTC 5 years ago

by the way,
since our e-governance has a long way to go...
I have been trying to find out... how much is the Salary or Wage level for the MPs in Armenian Natianal Assembly?

Is it enough to live by and feed the family without having another business on the side or without taking bribes?

Sasuntsi Anarchist
http://azat.wordpress.com

PS: on our website we have a cool video of Hugo Chavez revolution in Venezuela. Very interesting, you can watch it on azat.wordpress.com

[info]aramazd

May 13 2007, 19:24:31 UTC 5 years ago

around 350,000 AMD (1,000 USD), as far as I know (but ou can add some per diems here:))

Anonymous

December 22 2007, 04:40:22 UTC 4 years ago

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