If presidential elections in Ukraine were held this Sunday, incumbent President Viktor Yanukovych would be supported by 19.8 percent of Ukrainians, which is more than anyone else, as is seen from a public opinion poll the SOCIS Social and Marketing Research Center conducted on January 17-26 and the results of which it announced on Friday.
UDAR party leader Vitali Klitschko would come in second with 19.1 percent of the vote, and unaffiliated parliamentarian Petro Poroshenko third with 10.5 percent .
Batkivschyna parliamentary faction leader Arseniy Yatseniuk would garner 6.3 percent of the vote, Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko 4.5 percent, and Svoboda party leader Oleh Tiahnybok 3.6 percent.
About one third of those polled were undecided as to whom to give their vote or whether to come to the polling stations at all.
If former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko were among those running for president instead of Yatseniuk, Yanukovych would get 20.4 percent, Klitschko 14.8 percent, Tymoshenko 14.6 percent, Poroshenko 9 percent, Symonenko 4 percent, and Tiahnybok 3.2 percent.
The poll shows that 49.4 percent would certainly come to polling stations, another 26.4 percent are likely to do so, 5.4 percent would most likely not, and 13.2 percent would certainly not, while 5.5 percent are undecided.
As concerns the popularity of political parties, the Party of Regions would come in first in parliamentary elections with 20.7 percent of the vote, the UDAR party would get 16 percent, Batkivschyna 13.9 percent, the Solidarity party led by Poroshenko 6.4 percent, the Communist Party 5.5 percent, Svoboda 4.5 percent, and any other parties would garner less than 1 percent of the vote.
Another 30 percent said they were undecided for whom to vote or whether to come to polling stations at all if parliamentary elections were held in the near future.
Asked what foreign political course they would like Ukraine to choose, 42.9 percent of the respondents would prefer accession to the European Union, while 31.6 percent would vote for joining the Belarusian-Kazakh-Russian Customs Union, if such a referendum were held in the near future. Another 13.9 percent would not take part in it, and 11.5 percent refrained from answering this question.
