A new survey shows that President Volodymyr Zelensky would win if a fresh Presidential election were held today. However, the survey also indicates that the President is losing support.
The Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky remains the most popular politician in Ukraine, according to a new survey by the organization SOCIS. If elections were held today, 18.6 percent of Ukrainians would vote for him, which is better than the former President Petro Poroshenko, who is next on the list with 12.6 percent.
The pro-Russian candidate Yuriy Boyko, the leader of the party Opposition Platform – For Life, comes third with 8.2 percent pointing to him as their candidate, and the former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko comes fourth with 7.8 percent.
The new survey confirms what previous surveys have shown. The Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who took office in 2019 on an anti-corruption agenda, remains the most popular candidate for Presidency in Ukraine.
Also most unpopular
If Zelensky and Poroshenko would go head to head in a Presidential election right now, in the same way they did in 2019; the survey shows that Zelensky would win with 53.9 percent of the votes against 46.1 percent to Poroshenko.
However, while the survey shows that Zelensky does remain popular in Ukraine, it also concludes that the President is the most unpopular candidate. 29.3 percent say that they will not vote for Zelensky under any circumstances, while 28.8 percent of the 2,000 respondents would not vote for Petro Poroshenko.
25.3 percent would not vote for Boyko, and 16.1 percent not on Tymoshenko. Therefore, SOCIS informs that the sampling error is plus/minus 2.4 percent.
Support has been declining
While Zelensky remains the favorite to win a new Presidential election, he has lost support among Ukrainians since his landslide victory in 2019. Back then, Zelensky got more than 70 percent of the votes against Poroshenko in the second round of the Presidential election. His party, Servants of the People, won the majority of Ukrainian parliament seats a few months later.
Zelensky has lost support among some Ukrainians for several reasons such as the lack of economic growth and the government’s shortcomings during the pandemic, which we also have written about at Ukrainenu.
Zelensky also recently dismissed the now-former Charman of the Rada, Dmytro Razumkov, which some experts say is a move to consolidate power.
“If the president wins this duel and Razumkov and the political forces that are grouping around him lose, this will mean strengthening presidential power, strengthening the presidential vertical with all the consequences,” said Vadym Karasiov, director of the Institute for Global Strategies, to Interfax-Ukraine recently.
However, Zelenskys supporters argue otherwise and say that Zelensky is simply trying to fight the forces who are working against Western reforms.
