According to a poll conducted by Ipsos Strategic Marketing, on the topic of April elections, of the 4.8 million persons eligible to vote in Serbia at least half will go to the polls, said Srdjan Bogosavljevic, consultant of this research agency.
Bogosavljevic also said that that would be “a proof of the election’s legitimacy, but also that no-one would be able to disregard the result of the vote since there is no constitutional stipulation in regard to the turnout rate”. Of the total number of 6.8 million registered voters in Serbia, it is estimated that between 20% and 25% live abroad, as in the case of other Western Balkan countries.
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“The research was conducted on the population and the electorate in the country, not on those who live abroad and will not vote at all or will vote in small percentages. Of those 4.8 million voters (estimated to be registered and living in Serbia), at least half will surely go to the polls. This is close to the 50% threshold. About 60% of them already know for whom to vote,” said Bogosavljevic.
He added that the results of the poll show that the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) is likely to get more than 50% of the votes and that the Serbian Socialist Party (SPS) will certainly exceed the electoral threshold with between 9% and 1% of the votes, as would the Alliance for Serbia movement, which however opted for the election boycott.
“In the case of a boycott, the Serbian Radical Party and Aleksandar Sapic could exceed the 3% electoral threshold of 3%, while the Dosta je Bilo movement could also come close to it,” Bogosavljevic estimates.
Bogosavljevic pointed out that depopulation posed a serious problem in Serbia, i.e. the fact that about 30,000 people leave the country every year, while at the same time about a decline in the birth rate of 35,000 births is also expected.
“The country loses about 70,000 people a year. This is an indisputable fact. The birthrate stands at 1.4 children per mother and we need at least 2.1 to strike a balance,” he added.
(N1, 19.01.2020)
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