With only 20 days left until Ukraine’s parliamentary elections on July 21, the latest poll shows that five political parties can overcome the 5 percent threshold to make it into the Verkhovna Rada.
According to the survey published on July 1 by the Social Monitoring Center and the Oleksandr Yaremenko Ukrainian Institute for Social Research, the five parties are: President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, a Russia-friendly party Opposition Platform – For Life, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna, Ukraine’s rock star Svyatoslav Vakarchuk’s Voice party and Petro Poroshenko’s European Solidarity party.
Over 43 percent among the decided voters say they will support the Servant of People party, led by Zelensky.
Also, according to the poll, 70 percent of voters say they want Zelensky to conduct direct negotiations with Russia in order to stop its war against Ukraine.
The Russia-friendly Opposition Platform For Life has the second place with 12 percent of the vote among the decided voters.
One of the leaders of the party is a Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk, who is a friend to Russian President Vladimir Putin and his unofficial representative in Ukraine.
Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna Party polled at 9.4 percent, having gained 1 percent since the last week. It won back the level of support it had a month ago.
The recently-launched Voice, a liberal party led by Vakarchuk, takes the fourth place, according to the poll. It gets 8.3 percent of the vote. It gained 3 percent since mid-June, when it polled at 5 percent.
However, the results are not looking great for the European Solidarity party, the rebranded political entity led by Poroshenko, the former president defeated in a landslide by Zelensky on April 21. It gets the fifth place with 6.6 percent of the vote.
Poroshenko’s European Solidarity party also tops “the anti-ranking of the poll,” with 44.1 percent of voters who say they would never vote for the party. The Opposition Platform takes the second place in the anti-ranking with 24.2 percent.
Former Security Service of Ukraine Chief Ihor Smeshko’s Strength and Honor party would be supported by 3.3 percent of voters, while the Civil Position party headed by the 2019 presidential candidate Anatoly Grytsenko would get only 3.2 percent of votes. They both fall short of reaching a 5-percent threshold to get into parliament.
The poll was conducted among over 2,000 respondents representing all regions of Ukraine, except territories occupied by Russia in the eastern oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk, as well as Crimea.
