the questionnaire design, given the expected low level of declaration. They cover issues of political trust and political statements that differentiate between the supporters of the main political parties. The measures show that the survey’s party support levels probably indicate the core minimum support for ZANU-PF, and a level of MDC-T support that is seemingly lower than the support the MDC-T enjoys on a range of parallel measures: ZANU-PF parallel support indicators: 16% of the respondents want a government body to run elections; 17% deny that violence and intimidation affect the party vote in elections; 16% believe that the youth militia look after the best interests of Zimbabweans. In addition, 16% say they trust ZANU-PF ‘a lot’ (a further 20% reckon they ‘somewhat’ trust ZANU-PF) – for a total of 36% compared with the MDC-T total of 66%. A higher percentage of 43% said that they trust the Presidency of the country. MDC-T parallel support indicators: 45% credit the MDC-T with good performance in the IG. In the domain of trust, 66% say that they trust the MDC-T ‘somewhat’ or ‘a lot’; and 67% trust the Office of the Prime Minister (occupied by the MDC-T’s Tsvangirai) ‘somewhat’ or ‘a lot’ (compared with the 43% of the Presidency gets). V: Elections – expectations, experiences and electoral violence-fear-coercion The contradictions of contemporary Zimbabwe are nowhere more evident than in Zimbabweans’ expectations and experiences of elections. None of the Zimbabwean presidential and parliamentary elections of the 11 years since February 2000 has been less than traumatic for large proportions of Zimbabweans. The continued practice of violence signals that ‘Election 2011/12’ will be no less disturbing. Zimbabweans in this survey expect violence again to prevail – whilst they also believe new elections would be ‘more free and fair’ than those of 2008. Zimbabweans believe that violence will impact on the vote proportions that parties get in the elections – 74% think that people sometimes vote for those they don’t support, due to fear. They expect that rights of freedom of expression will be compromised. 55% think that fear of violence might make Zimbabweans abstain from voting – substantially more than the 33% that reckon that on the day of elections Zimbabweans will bury fear of violence and intimidation and go and vote. Yet, they are impatient to get elections. When the survey was conducted in December 2010, 11% declared that elections should be held ‘immediately’ (in 2009 31% wanted elections ‘immediately’). Another 46% in the 2010 survey chose ‘2011’, which in effect means that 57% want elections in 2011. Almost the same percentage as in 2009 (56% in 2009) thus wanted elections within one year. However, this is not a carte blanche insistence on immediate elections. The respondents clearly stated that the constitution needs to be drafted and subjected to referendum before they go to elections. Their desired date for elections confirms this – it is more than a year since the previous survey and still in the 2010 survey they wanted elections ‘within a year’. The prerequisite of a new constitution clearly has to fall into place. Lawmakers and constitutional drafters are expected to waste no time in getting a new constitutional dispensation in place. 7