You're reading: Poll: Less than 5% Ukrainians believe presidential election will be fair

A large majority of Ukrainians believe the presidential election set for Jan. 17 will be rigged, a joint poll conducted by Democratic Initiatives and Ukrainian Sociology Service has found.

According to the poll, 41.4% respondents believe that the election results could be manipulated; 29.5% believe there will be some violations that will not significantly affect the overall result; and 15.7% said they were certain that the entire vote would be rigged.

Only 4.5% believe that the election will be fair, while 9% could not answer.

This means that more than half of the respondents (57.1%) think that the election will be rigged.

A total of 2,010 respondents were polled nationwide between December 12-26. The margin of error is 2.3%.

Iryna Bekeshkina of Democratic Initiatives said the poll results suggest a sense of disappointment among the Ukrainian population concerning the election.

Ukraine has been in a state of disappointment for a long time now, Bekeshkina said.

Ballot stuffing and voter buying is likely to occur and voting from home is expected to help manipulate election results, said CEO of the Ukrainian Voters Committee Oleksandr Chernenko.

From a technical point of view, this year’s presidential election is the worst ever, with many polls likely to see their results being canceled, he said.