20.05.2014
Socio-political moods of the population: May 2014
- According to a nationwide survey conducted by Rating Group in cooperation with two other leading polling organizations in mid-May 2014, just one week before the presidential election, Ukrainians demonstrated a very high level of electoral engagement. About 82% of voters said they were definitely or likely to participate in the vote, while 12% said they would not and 6% were undecided. In the presidential election scheduled for May 25, Petro Poroshenko remained the clear frontrunner, supported by 34% of all respondents. Yulia Tymoshenko ranked second with 6.5%, followed by Serhiy Tihipko with 5.8%. Oleh Liashko and Anatoliy Hrytsenko each received just over 4% support, Mykhailo Dobkin 3.5%, and Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko 2.2%, while all other candidates polled below 2%. At the same time, nearly 23% of respondents said they had not yet decided whom to vote for, and about 12% stated they would not take part in the election.
- Among those who intended to vote and had already made their choice, Poroshenko’s lead was even more pronounced, with 53.2% support, compared with 10.1% for Tymoshenko and 8.8% for Tihipko, while Liashko and Hrytsenko would each receive just over 6%. When asked to predict the likely winner regardless of their own voting intentions, nearly half of respondents named Poroshenko, while only small shares expected Tymoshenko or Tihipko to win, and more than a third declined to make a forecast.
- The survey also measured views on key political and social issues. A plurality of respondents supported Ukrainian as the sole state language with Russian allowed official use, while others favored granting Russian official status in certain regions or making both Ukrainian and Russian state languages. An overwhelming majority supported Ukraine’s unitary form of government, with fewer than one in six favoring a federal system. Developments in the southeast of the country were most often seen as a form of covert Russian aggression, although significant minorities interpreted them as either a popular uprising or as terrorist acts.
Methodology
- Survey population: population of Ukraine aged 18 and over
- Sample size: 6,200 respondents
- Method: face-to-face interviews
- Margin of error (95% confidence):
- near 50%: ≤ 0.8%
- near 30%: ≤ 0.7%
- near 10%: ≤ 0.5%
- near 5%: ≤ 0.4%
- Fieldwork period: May 8 – May 13, 2014
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