Georgia’s recent turnover of power, while unique in many ways, has followed a very familiar public opinion narrative: “Long established leader replaced with much fanfare by newcomer. Public sure this one is different.
Georgia’s recent turnover of power, while unique in many ways, has followed a very familiar public opinion narrative: “Long established leader replaced with much fanfare by newcomer. Public sure this one is different.
” We can find hundreds of these headlines over the past few centuries, in as many languages. Unfortunately, the second chapter of this story is usually a bit more subdued: “Public meets newcomer, realizes he has no magic powers.” As we watch the political process unfold, we see countless small failures and scandals, making even the most appealing or succesful leaders seem all-too-human.
Georgian Opinion Research Business International, the Georgian member of Gallup International, has been running our regular omnibus survey over the last few years, and we’ve been collecting some interesting trend data. We’ve been asking approval ratings, confidence in a wide variety of institutions, and happiness with political actions. This week I’ll retell this age-old story of new-guy-worship in confidence ratings.
After the last poll we conducted, it looked like people’s faith in Ivanishvili was climbing steadily, and that Saakashvili had bottomed out. Based on that data I wrote a column that cautioned against grand expectations; popular confidence has a way of moderating. With very few exceptions, political leaders can expect their first few months of interaction with the public to be rosy and well received, followed by a souring.
While our August survey is only one data point, the timing and numbers seem to suggest that Ivanishvili may have peaked this summer and will settle into cruising altitude very soon (which is just above or below 50% for most politicians in democracies): In a two month period, he experienced an 8-point drop. Meanwhile, confidence in Saakashvili is remains low.
Remember that it wasn’t always this way; there was a time that Misha was the newcomer. The first time we asked Georgians about their new president’s abilities in 2004, 73% were sure that he would do great things for Georgia.
Within a year reality kicked in and his numbers dropped below 50%, never to recover. This is guaranteed to be the fate of almost any new leader; people tend to overexaggerate winners’ abilities and forget that politics is a messy process rife with small failure (even if it ends in success).
Now, we can expect the same fate for Ivanishvili. Even if he does “leave politics” in the coming year as he promises, we can be relatively sure there won’t be massive crowds of weeping supporters to see him off; they’ll be busy idealizing the new kid.
All data in this are have margins of error around 3% with 95% confidence. Visit our website at gorbi.com for more articles.
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