After the Revolution of Dignity in 2013-2014, and the flee of the President Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine has had 5 national election campaigns: two presidential campaigns, two parliamentary runs, and local campaigns all over the country. During this “short life” the country has experienced the post-revolutionary political instability, illegal annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, and Russia’s unfolding of the armed conflict in the Donbass against Ukraine that is currently underway.
In 2019, regular presidential and the snap parliamentary elections were recognized as democratic, fair, and free. It was confirmed by OPORA representatives, and also by international observation missions. Violations occurred, too. However, they failed to affect the course of campaigns or the voting results. In general, the elections have a number of records hit: the longest ballot paper in the first round of presidential elections – 80 cm long, with names of 39 candidates; the highest winning rate in the second presidential round – 73.22% of votes; the highest number of voters who have changed their voting places without changing their voting addresses before the second round in the presidential elections – 325,604 persons. OPORA’s joint efforts with the partners contributed a great merit. After all, the “how to check your name on the voter list” search inquiry hit the TOP-10 in Google for 2019 in Ukraine. Here, credit shall also go to OPORA, among others.
The 2019 awareness raising campaign was the most successful case for the Civil Network OPORA over the last 14 years. Due to partnerships with the media holding, with the production studio, and the partner film crew, we managed to obtain bigger outreach. Thus, theme-based stories with our experts, social ads and TV shows we produced covered about 46 mln. of TV viewers during the two election campaigns. On the Internet, our had 6 mln. views. In mass media and in social media, OPORA over 15,000 times.
Certainly, the successful, and more importantly, the free of charge cooperation with the media, was made possible due to the many years of our activities in electoral domain and due to no political bias we have been manifesting, comprising our most important capital – the reputation. Moreover, the corporate social responsibility of the media business fosters the adherence to social standards, and the willingness to engage in awareness raising among voters. We would like to keep living in the society where people are aware of their rights and are able to protect them. There is no room for irresponsible politicians in the country of responsible citizens.
We have prepared this long-form article about our successful communication and awareness raising campaign:
https://www.longread.oporaua.org/efficient_awareness_raising
We hope it will be useful for you as well.