The Macedonian Center for International Cooperation (MCIC) and the Institute for Democracy (IDSCS) have started a series of mutual activities for the Local Elections 2013, like public opinion surveys, monitoring the electoral programs and campaigns, the media and the electoral administration on the election day. As a beginning activity, the public opinion on the characteristics constituting people’s choice of a mayor and a councilor list was surveyed.
The survey showed that the citizens want fair and professional mayors. Honesty is the most important value that a mayor should possess for one third of the citizens (31.9%). Other important values according to the citizens are diligence, tolerance and responsibility, while the least important are environment protection and patriotism.
The citizens would mostly want their mayor to be a professional politician (40.0%), while other desirable professions are businessman and teacher/ professor.
Citizens find important to have more young people up to 27 years of age (45.0%) and women (31.1%), among the mayoral candidates on the Local Elections 2013. They find the presence of candidates from other ethnic communities less important, while the majority of citizens would not vote for a mayoral candidate from other ethnic community.
The citizens state that they will vote for quality programs (56.7%) and mayoral candidates (33.0%). In terms of the councilor lists, for the large majority of citizens (72.1%), what matters is not the sympathy towards certain political party, but the quality of the councilor candidates and the election program offered.
According to the citizens, the main priorities in the mayoral programs should be local economic development and urban planning.
The majority of citizens think that the parties insufficiently include (85.2%) and take into consideration the ideas of the citizens (69.8%).
The public opinion survey is conducted through a phone inquiry, made on 13 and 14 February 2013, on a representative example of 425 respondents, +/- 5%.
The complete analysis can be downloaded here.