|
The International Republican Institute (IRI) continues to work with governing parties to promote effective communications and has expanded its assistance to parties to include training for the development of local branch offices of major political parties and youth leadership.
Youth Leadership Development
IRI focuses special attention on the parties' youth auxiliaries, conducting multi-faceted trainings for party youth organizations. IRI assists these youth auxiliaries in ensuring that their agendas and issues of concern are addressed by the party as a whole and included in the party's platform. IRI also helps party youth develop their own public presence and image separate from the party as a whole, and work to gain public attention to their issues of concern.
Local and National Level Party Development
To assist parties in developing their organizational structures and improving their functionality at the grass roots level, IRI works with each of Croatia's major democratic political parties. Working with the parties’ national leadership, IRI selects key local branches helping them to craft local political plans that include goals for membership recruitment, fundraising, organizational and communications structures and issue advocacy, and to lay out specific timelines for implementation.
Public Opinion Research
Public opinion polling is an important tool in helping parties better understand the concerns of the citizens. To assist the parties, IRI fields nationwide surveys, conducted by a Croatian polling firm in order to provide strategic advice on message development, coalition building, minority issues, Euro-Atlantic integration and reforms. Polling results are shared with political party partners, targeted ministries and the president's office to help them address the concerns of Croatian voters.
In 1998, when IRI opened its Croatia office, the program was based on public opinion polling and focus group research, which enabled the parties to better understand and respond to citizens' concerns in the elections. In fostering a new respect for public opinion, IRI persuaded the parties to accept the central paradigm of its program - that public opinion research is an essential element of political communication.
During the campaign for the 2003 parliamentary elections, IRI fielded a series of public opinion polls to assist parties in on message development and voter-targeting. This effort culminated in a poll utilizing a sample double the normal size. The poll yielded specific data broken down by individual election districts. This allowed IRI to provide individualized advice to coalition parties on how to hone their messages and target their campaign efforts. While the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) had been consistently polling higher than the Social Democratic Party (SDP), the final poll indicated that the HDZ was stronger than anticipated. The poll also uncovered the fact that the SDP had vulnerable mandates in several districts that could be taken by the HDZ. The poll predicted a virtual split between the HDZ and other right-leaning parties on one side, and the SDP and left-leaning parties on the other side. The election results were almost exactly as the IRI poll predicted.
|
