Pollster: The opposition has to build up hope

The director of a prominent Turkish polling company said on Friday that a margin of 10 to 15 percent between the presidential runners is likely to emerge in the elections on 14 May, and that it is possible to predict the loser, although it is hard to guess who the winner will be, + Gercek's Osman Cakli reported.

Speaking at a meeting of Vote and Beyond, a civil election monitoring group, KONDA's Bekir Agirdir said that some of the major issues which will shape up the election results will be the rising cost of living, unemployment and the impacts of recent disasters.

He said:

"We roughly have an idea about who the loser will be, yet we don't know who will be the winner. We are still in the process of observing whether or not the opposition will be able to organize the existing potential in the right way, whether they will be convincing for the people who have been hurt by current developments. I believe that there will be changes in the voting tendencies of the people in the earthquake zone, but there are many factors that are likely to change these tendencies: Social identities, rage against the opposite side, class conflicts."

He added:

"We observe that it is anxiety rather than hope that is currently the prevailing mood. When people are overwhelmed by anxiety, they tend to lean on power. This is why it will be decisive whether or not the opposition will be capable of building up hope. Unfortunately they could not go much beyond discussions over the presidential candidate in the past year."

The chair of Vote and Beyond, Ertim Oytun, said that they will be active with 100,000 volunteers in polling stations during the elections, and their objective is to gather results from all ballot boxes.

Reminded by a reporter that they were able to confirm the results only two days later in the previous elections, Oytun was asked if he thinks this will be a disadvantage.

"We aim to have a rapid and correct information flow by 7 PM on the election day through a system we developed," he answered. "We believe that the application we developed will bring us an advantage."