Yesterday’s RAI poll, presented by Alphanews, was interesting. Even more interesting were the observations made by Olympios Toumazos, chairman of RAI.
A poll always tells the truth when it is read properly — taking into account the circumstances in which it was conducted, and what lies behind the answers. Numbers on their own sometimes reveal the full picture. At other times, they can create misleading impressions.
There are, of course, some findings that emerge very clearly from the survey. Broadly speaking, we could say this:
Two in three respondents say they are dissatisfied with the current government, while one in three says they are satisfied.
What does that mean?
“These figures show that the current assessment of the government is more negative than positive,” Toumazos, chairman of RAI Consultants Ltd, told Alpha tis Kyriakis in his analysis of the company’s poll.
At the same time, he noted that experience in Cyprus and abroad shows that satisfaction with the way a president performs his duties does not necessarily translate directly into voting intention at a future election.
That is an important point when assessing the political landscape at this particular moment. On the one hand, we have a government whose standing in society is negative. On the other, that does not automatically amount to voting intention.
The significance of this distinction is also borne out by the tables showing the party background of voters who say they are satisfied with the Christodoulides government.
That matters because almost half of Democratic Rally voters, even though their party formally places itself in opposition, view the President and his administration positively.
And that reinforces the perception that a section of Democratic Rally voters is prepared to vote for Nikos Christodoulides.
Another particularly important finding of the poll sends a message directly to Christodoulides himself.
Once again, the survey shows — and confirms — that foreign policy is his strongest card, while domestic governance remains a weakness.
Giorgos Pamboridis’ description of the Christodoulides administration as a “civil-service, managerial government” clearly reflects a view shared by a sizeable section of society.
In other words, this is seen as a government with a good record on foreign policy and sound economic management, but one that is trapped by its own indecision and by a civil-service mentality in the way it operates.
And responsibility for that lies squarely with the way the system of government has been structured around the President himself, the Deputy Minister to the President and the wider administrative set-up.
The broader conclusion of the poll is not simply how positively or negatively the President is being assessed, or what lies behind those assessments.
How society and voters behave from here on, as the presidential election approaches, will depend to a large extent on who they are actually asked to choose between.
At the moment, Christodoulides effectively has no opponent, because there are still no official candidates.
What he certainly does have in front of him, however, is a good version of himself and a bad one.
The good version is that of a President whose foreign policy and overall administration receive positive marks, who has managed crises and difficult issues such as migration, and who continues to preside over an economy with a positive outlook. A common thread running through all this is that three ministers, in particular, have produced noteworthy work.
But he also has to contend with the bad version of himself: a government that is often dysfunctional on domestic issues because of indecision and bureaucratic ways of operating.
It is up to him to change that picture — and not to assume that developments within the party system have already tilted the field in his favour.
