Alexey Navalny – Volkov’s big interview about Smart Voting – about the selection of candidates, our infrastructure and criteria for success

– Just want to dispel the myth: we have never done sociology for specific districts. Because both the 2019 elections and the 2020 elections were regional elections. Regional and municipal. The largest constituency that we have had to deal with is the constituencies in the Moscow City Duma in 2019, where there were 150-160 thousand voters each. Basically, we dealt with constituencies of 20-30 thousand voters.

Spit in the face of everyone who says that it is possible to study such districts effectively using sociological methods. How can you research a district with 20 thousand voters? There should be a sample, at least 600 questionnaires – this means 3%. To talk to 3% of voters, you just have to bypass everyone. Well, then our sociological center has always worked by telephone calls. Here you call a big city – how to understand that by random sampling, generating phone numbers, you got exactly to the voter of this particular constituency? This is all complete nonsense.

We conducted federal polls and, in some cases, regional ones, in order to understand the overall ratings of parties and political forces. This gave some kind of reference point relative to how many points an affiliation with one or another political force can give a person. Plus we looked at the electoral history of the candidate and the constituency. Both the candidate and the constituencies, because there have been situations when a candidate previously participated in elections in another constituency, but recruited well – that is, he knows how to campaign. And there have been situations when in a given constituency candidates from a particular party are historically voted better than others.

We looked at the election funds, at the activeness of the campaign. We relied on our regional grid. To make recommendations, people were asked to literally walk the streets. Our supporters, staff members, just volunteers were asked: “Walk around, look, whose billboards are hanging, what agitators you see, what kind of stickers you see, who is holding meetings in the courtyards.” And so on and so forth.

Finally, we looked at the activity on the Internet. Who leads and invests in a campaign on social networks, who buys banner ads, who generally shows at least a desire to run a campaign. Because, of course, it is strange to support a candidate who has zero rubles in the electoral fund, who does nothing, to put it mildly. If a candidate does not fight, does not want to win, apparently, this is either a technical candidate-spoiler, or a person with some other goals. But in any case, he does not look like an uncoordinated candidate who has a chance of winning.

These are the research methods we used, compiling hundreds of our recommendations for regional and municipal elections in 2019 and 2020.

What are the special features of 2021? First, as it is easy to see, we now do not have a network of headquarters, and this really significantly complicates the collection of information in the regions. But listen, there is no network, but people stayed. No matter what Putin prohibits and no matter how he calls us “extremists” and “terrorists”, no one can forbid me, as a human being, to ask my former colleague Petya from Uryupinsk to walk along the streets of Uryupinsk and see what stickers are hanging on the streets. Truth? Nobody can prevent me from using the same historical data on the elections of the past years and on the results of the candidates of the past years.

I am telling now for the first time that one of the new things that we are going to do is to conduct a mass survey of our supporters, using the contacts of those people who have registered with us somewhere. We are going to ask them to help us, “crowdsource” the necessary information. We are going to write directly at some point: “Guys, walk the streets, see how the campaign is being conducted, tell us whose campaign you see, who is most visible in your district.” And we will also use this data in our analytical model.

The second innovation of this year is precisely that now we are going to rely on the data of sociological research in the constituencies for the elections to the State Duma. Because in relation to these districts, where 550-600 thousand voters live, it makes sense. We are in touch with some sociological centers, the data methodology of which we trust.
(…)

– And how many people are engaged in all this?

– Our analytical group consists of five people.

– Is that including you?

– Yes, including me. And about 40-50 regional stories work with us.

– When will voters know who it is recommended to vote for?

– Lists of “Smart Voting” are published at that moment and day when a candidate cannot be removed from the elections either by himself or by the party that has nominated him. (…) This is five days before the election.

https: //meduza.io/feature/2021 …