You're reading: Poll: Party of Regions of Ukraine losing support

If elections to the Verkhovna Rada were held in mid-April, five parties would have garnered enough votes to qualify for the parliament, i.e. the Party of Regions (13.9% of the vote), the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc (10.6%), the Front for Change led by Arseniy Yatseniuk (7.1%), the Communist Party (3.2%), and the Udar (Strike) party led by Vitali Klitschko (3.1%), as can be seen from a nationwide public opinion poll of 1,020 respondents conducted by the Kyiv International Sociology Institute on April 8 to 18.

The Strong Ukraine party led by Sergiy Tigipko would have been supported by 2.8% of the voters, the all-Ukrainian association Freedom led by Oleh Tiahnybok by 2.7%, and Anatoliy Hrytsenko’s Bloc ‘Civil Position’ by 1.6%, which is below the 3% qualification threshold.

The number of voters ready to go to polling stations has dropped by 23 percentage points to 50% from 73% since June 2010, the institute said in a statement.

This decline is mainly attributed to Party of Regions supporters, as their number has dropped from 38% to 13.9% in this period of time, it said.

The number of voters ready to give their votes for the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc and Freedom has remained virtually the same.

Support for Front of Changes has grown in the past ten months to 7.1% from 3.7%, that for the Udar party to 3% from 1.5%, and that for Civil Position to 1.6% from 1%.