Chocolate magnate Poroshenko leads Ukrainian voters’ preferences – poll
These are the findings of a joint survey conducted for the Ukrainian Voters’ Committee on May 8-13 and unveiled at Interfax by representatives from Sotsis, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KMIS) and Rating, a sociological group, in Kyiv on Tuesday.
“Were the parliamentary elections held in the very near future, Solidarity Party would come first with about 17 percent of the vote, followed by Batkivshchyna (11 percent), UDAR (8.3 percent), Party of Regions (5.7 percent), and the Radical Party of Oleg Lyashko (4.6 percent),” KMIS Executive Director Natalia Kharchenko said.
Anatoliy Hrytsenko’s Civil Position and Oleg Tyahnybok’s Svoboda can each count on the support of 4.3 percent of the voters, she added.
At the same time, the current support for Solidarity is largely due to Poroshenko’s popularity as a presidential candidate and not the platform of the party proper, Kharchenko said.
These ratings are preliminary and are unlikely to remain until the next Verkhovna Rada elections, given the constantly changing political situation in Ukraine recently, Kharchenko said.
According to the same poll findings, about 34 percent of Ukrainians are likely to support Poroshenko at the May 25 presidential election, whereas his closest rivals, Yulia Tymoshenko and Sergei Tihipko, were rated much lower at 6.5 percent and 5.8 percent, respectively.
The survey, conducted by the personal interview method, polled 6,200 respondents aged 18 and above in all Ukrainian regions; its margin of error is 0.8 percent, Interfax reports.