Poll: About 20% of Ukrainians support president, one-quarter back ruling party

About one quarter of Ukrainians are going to vote for the ruling Party of Regions at the upcoming parliamentary elections, and about 20% would like Viktor Yanukovych to remain president while only around 1% would vote for Prime Minister Mykola Azarov if he ran for president today, an opinion poll suggests. 

The PolitLab opinion studies group said that 26.7% of those it questioned in a poll this month said they would vote for the Party of Regions, 15% were going to vote for the Batkivschyna United Opposition, 11.4% for the Communist Party, and 11.1% for Vitali Klitschko of the UDAR party.

Forward Ukraine!, a party led by Natalia Korolevska, had the support of 6.9% and Svoboda All-Ukraine Union the backing of 3.2% of respondents, only 1.3% and 0.9% were going to vote for Our Ukraine and parliamentary chairman Volodymyr Lytvyn's People's Party respectively, and 16.4% were undecided.

Asked who they would vote for if the next presidential election were held today, 21.9% of respondents named Yanukovych, 12.8% Vitali Klitschko, 7.7% former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, 7.2% Communist leader Petro Symonenko, and 5.6% head of the board of the Batkivschyna United Opposition Arseniy Yatseniuk.

Deputy Prime Minister and Social Policy Minister Sergiy Tigipko would have mustered the votes of 4.2% of respondents, Korolevska would have ended up with 4%, Anatoly Hrytsenko, leader of the Civil Position party, with 2.3%, and Svoboda leader Oleh Tiahnybok with 1.8%.

Only 0.9% of respondents would have cast their ballots for Prime Minister Azarov, 0.6% for parliamentary chairman Lytvyn, 0.5% for Oleksandr Turchynov, head of the Batkivschyna United Opposition's central election committee, another 0.5% for First Deputy Prime Minister Valery Khoroshkovsky, while 13.1% were undecided.

PolitLab questioned 1,200 people in interviews at their homes on September 6-13.