Riga Mayor Ilsis’s approval rating drops sharply at the beginning of the year

The rating of the mayor of Riga fell by 11.8 points – from positive 1.2 to negative 10.6. The rating is the difference between the positive and negative ratings.

The Mayor of Riga currently has the lowest rating among the top elected officials of the Riga City Council.

1.3% of the respondents rated the activities of Īrša very positively, fairly positively – 32.4%, fairly negatively – 30.9%, very negatively – 13.4% of the respondents.

Deputy Mayor Edvards Ratnieks (NA/LRA) saw her rating rise from 0.8 to 2.9, while Deputy City Council Chairman Linda Ozola (“Riga Code”) saw her rating fall from -6.4 to -9.4.

Among the heads of the committees, the Chairman of the Committee for Security, Order and Prevention of Corruption, Māris Micherevski (“Riga Code”), received the highest rating with a plus score of 3.9. He was followed by the Chairman of the Committee for Education, Culture and Sports, Laima Geigina, with a score of +2.5.

The rating of the Chairman of the Housing and Environment Committee, Viesturas Zeps (LA), is minus 0.4, the rating of the Chairman of the Urban Property Committee, Daiņa Loča (NA/LRA), is minus 2.5, the rating of the Chairman of the Urban Development Committee, Ines Andersones (JV), is minus 2.6, the Chairman of the Social Issues Committee, Jura Radzeviča (GKR) – minus 4.9, the Chairman of the Traffic and Transport Affairs Committee, Olaf Pulkas (JV) – minus 6.3.

Political scientist and public relations expert Filips Rajevskis admitted that he could not say exactly why Eyles’s approval ratings had plummeted.

By evaluating the ratings of all politicians, he concluded that there might be a correlation between ratings and visibility. Among officials of the Riga City Council, politicians with lower visibility had higher ratings, and Ķirsim had a huge visibility, significantly higher than Pulka, who followed closely behind in the visibility indicator.

If according to SKDS data, 6.6% of respondents had not heard of ķirsi, then 22.6% of survey participants knew nothing about Pulka.

Rajewski noted that it’s hard to get people to know you once you become mayor, and that building recognition is said to be a major challenge in the early days of a mayoral campaign.

On the other hand, when you manage to overcome it and everyone knows you, people start to associate the mayor with all the absences that happen in the city government. The roads are not repaired – Kilsys is to blame, it snows, traffic jams – the mayor is to blame, there is no development – again his fault. This makes the situation of the incumbent mayor very challenging before the election, the political scientist admits.

He mentioned that one way to address this situation is to find some areas where positive development can be achieved and solve the problem, and then exploit them.

As an example, Rajevskis mentioned the former mayor of Riga, Gundars Bojars, who is associated with the completion of unfinished housing in the Dreiliņi neighborhood and the Riga-Stockholm ferry.

The political scientist rejected the possibility that the decline in the popularity of the Riga mayor was linked to the corruption scandal involving the acting Minister of Transport, Janis Vivodas.

“If we ask Riga residents how many people knew about the Voivod scandal, probably only a few people would be heard,” said Rajevsky. “Instead, the mayor should worry about the statistics on car tires being flat.”

He acknowledged that the construction season had begun and streets were being repaired, causing inconvenience to motorists. Perhaps people were tired of the mess on their streets, and that affected their evaluation of politicians.

The public research institute SKDS conducted a population survey in May this year, surveying 808 residents of Riga.