The survey conducted in late March 2019 showed the notable changes in the voters’ attitudes prior to the first round of presidential elections in Ukraine. Should the presidential elections be held ‘this Sunday’, the biggest part of voters would give their votes to Volodymyr Zelenskiy (24.2%), Petro Poroshenko (15.1%), Yuriy Boyko (15.0%) or Yulia Tymoshenko (14.7%).
The other candidates share quite modest chances to reach the second round of the presidential elections: the “Big Four” are followed by Anatoliy Grytsenko (7.5%), Oleg Lyashko (5.2%), Oleksandr Vilkul (3.4%), Ruslan Koshulynskiy (2.8%), Ihor Smeshko (1.9%), Illya Kiva (1.1%), and Oleksandr Shevchenko (0.8%).
Changes in the volume of voters’ support that shifted the ranking of Ukrainian politicians might have been stipulated by the following reasons:
- Current leadership of Volodymyr Zelenskiy proved that the so called protest voters constitute the bigger part of his electorate. Otherwise his popularity could significantly drop after he had been heavily criticized for shallow knowledge of economics and the basics of social policy during the meetings with foreign politicians and domestic businessmen.
- Serious augmentation in the figures of Yuriy Boyko could result from his visit to Moscow where he and Viktor Medvedchuk held the meeting with Russia’s prime minister and the head of Gazprom. The voters could response to two major outcomes of the meeting: should the direct supply of Russian gas be restored its cost would drop by 25% (as compared to current Ukrainian imports from Europe) lowering their expenses for communal services, and secondly, the parties discussed the way to save the profitability of Ukrainian pipe after the Ukrainian-Russian gas transit contract is over.
- A slight setback featured by Yulia Tymoshenko seems to be mainly caused by augmented public activity of her major rivals rather than by miscalculations of her staff. On the whole, there are four real candidates to enter the second round of the elections, and the difference in their current public support allows no strict assumptions regarding the name of the next president.
As regards the parliamentary elections, the new Ukrainian parliament would consist of the following political parties: “Sluga Narodu” Party of Volodymyr Zelenskiy (18.2%), “Opposition Platform – Za Zhittya” of Vadim Rabinovich, Yuriy Boyko and Viktor Medvedchuk (14.8%), the Batkivschyna Party of Yulia Tymoshenko (14.5%), the Solidarnist Party of the incumbent Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko (11.3%), and “Gromadyanska Pozitsiya” of Anatoliy Grytsenko, Dmytro Dobrodomov and Andriy Sadoviy (5.8%).
The other parties have insufficient public support to enter the next parliament: the Radical Party of Oleg Lyashko – 4.3%, “Svoboda” (Oleg Tyagnybok) – 3.0%, UKROP (Taras Batenko) – 1.4%, “Opposition Bloc – The Party of Peace and Development” (Eugeniy Muraev, Oleksandr Vilkul, Vadim Novinskiy) – 1.3%, the Socialist Party of Ukraine (Illya Kiva) – 1.3%.
The results of the survey are shown in the tables below.
The international research center BURI (The Belgium-Ukraine Research Institute) conducted the survey in Ukraine on March 24-25, 2019. Total quantity of respondents equaled 2012 individuals (representative sample). The survey method – combined interviews. Error margin is 2.2%.
