Exit-poll due in Moldova on 3 November to cost more than 400,000 lei

Chisinau, 31 October /MOLDPRES/ - An exit-poll will be organized in 67 polling stations from the Chisinau municipality at the runoff of the general local elections due on 3 November 2019. The exit-poll will be conducted by the FOP-STAR company of sociological investigation and marketing and the IMAS INVENT Institute of Marketing and Surveys and will cost 400,000 lei. The POLIEXPERT political consultancy company has already paid the money.    

At a news conference, the director of the beneficiary company, Igor Volnitchi, has said that there are risks; yet, the investigation might rehabilitate the image of exit-polls after the failure of such a survey in 2010. “There was a shock following the failed exit-poll from 2010. At that time, the investigation was carried out by a company having no connection with Moldova and the citizens lost their confidence in this democratic exercise. We must overcome this phobia. There are risks and we have earlier seen that the voters from Moldova are behaving slightly differently from the others,” Volnitchi noted.      

IMAS director Doru Petruti said that exit-poll’s data would be made public immediately after the closing of the polling stations. “An exit-poll-type exercise can say us much more. It can show us the preferences of women, men, young people and the elderly ones. We will be able to say how the people with higher education voted, how the voting was depending on the language spoken. We will learn what the motivation of voting was for one or another candidate,” Petruti noted.   

Doru Petruti also said that the questionnaire used at the 3 November investigation would contain 3 questions and the answers would not take the voters more than 2-3 minutes. As many as 174 interviewers will get involved in conducting the exit-poll and the data collected will be regarded as sociological data.    

The last exit-poll was made in May 2011. On 3 November, the runoff of the local elections will take place in 384 settlements, including the Moldovan capital.