Yulia Tymoshenko's Batkivshchyna party is topping public opinion polls, with 9 percent support ahead of the Oct. 25 local elections, a recent poll shows.
The ex-prime minister’s party has
significantly improved its popularity since the October 2014 parliamentary
elections, when it barely passed the four percent threshold.
After Batkivshchyna, according to a poll
conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology on Sept 17-25, are
the Bloc of President Petro Poroshenko Bloc with 8.6 percent and Samopomich
party with 7.1 percent.
The elections of mayors and local councils
will take place all over Ukraine except for Russian-annexed Crimea and
Russian-occupied regions of Donbas.
Parties will have to pass a 5 percent
threshold to get seat at the local councils.
The Oppositional Bloc, a reconstitution of
former allies of ousted President Viktor Yanukovych, also has a good chance to
be represented at the local government level, with 5.6 percent support.
The largest drop in popularity is the People’s
Front headed by Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, whose support dipped from 22
percent last year to below 1 percent in September. The party decided not to
participate in the local elections.
The
dynamics of parties support in 2014, 2015 shows that the Poroshenko bloc remains on top of the political landscape, Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna Party and The Oppositional Bloc, a reconstitution of former allies of ousted President Viktor Yanukovych have good chances to berepresented at the local government level. People’s Front headed by Prime Minister ArseniyYatsenyuk is the largest looser of political popularity dipping from 22 percent last year to below 1 percent in September.
The Poroshenko bloc remains on top of the
political landscape, with his party controlling 143 out of 422 lawmakers in the
parliament.
But political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko says
it’s too early to speak about what political forces might win the local
elections as “different Ukrainian regions will vote for different parties.”
The survey finds that 36.5 percent of
Ukrainians have not decided yet which party they would support. Almost 14
percent of people claimed they were not planning to vote, and 1.4 percent said
they were ready to intentionally “destroy a voting ballot.”
The previous local elections in Ukraine were
held in 2010 and marred by “administrative resource” – the strong
influence of local officials on voters.
Yanukovych and his allies were in power at
that time, and his Party of Regions won the local elections in 2010, gaining
nearly 52 percent of votes, according to the official website of Ukraine’s
Central Election Commission.
Fesenko said most Ukrainians will make a final
choice a day or two before the local elections.
“People don’t consider these elections as important
as the parliament ones. They don’t know the candidates. In addition, many
Ukrainians are disappointed with the current economic crisis,“ he said.
“It means that most of those voters who are still hesitating which party
to vote for will not go to the local elections at all.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Nataliya Trach can be reached at [email protected]
