KIEV, December 4. /TASS/. Results of the Ukrainian presidential elections, set to be held on March 31, 2019, are still very difficult to predict, said Irina Bekeshkina, Ukrainian sociologist, Head of the Democratic Initiatives Foundation.
"Unfortunately, even now we can see a real frenzy of populism, when (candidates) promise the moon, competing with each other in the impracticability of their pledges. The upcoming election outcome has never been so unpredictable," she said in an interview with Ukrainian online newspaper Ukrayinska Pravda (Ukrainian Truth) published on Tuesday.
Given recent polls, "it looks like Yulia Timoshenko is going to be one of the contenders in a (possible) second round," the expert added, pointing out that the situation with her key rival is "constantly changing." As such, the announcement that Co-Chairman of the Opposition Block, Yuri Boiko, will merge with Vadim Rabinovich’s Za Zhittya party straightaway suggested that Boiko is going to be the second finalist. However, it is too early to draw any conclusions because the Opposition Block will nominate its candidate with the "independent" Yevgeny Murayev also "grabbing away several much-needed percent," Bekeshkina stressed.
The expert believes that chances of Civil Position Party leader Anatoly Gritsenko to make it to the second round have been significantly undermined by Andrei Sadovyi, leader of the Self-Reliance party, who will also participate in the presidential race.
Bekeshkina noted that the outcome of the first round of elections would also depend greatly on whether showman Vladimir Zelensky, whose electorate is largely made up of the young people from the south and partly the east of the country, and musician Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, whose electorate is the youth from the central and the western parts of Ukraine, will join the race. There are a lot of questions now, upon which "Pyotr Poroshenko’s chances, who will find it harder to enter the second round than to win it, depend significantly," the expert emphasized.
The latest polls suggest that Timoshenko is the frontrunner in Ukraine’s forthcoming presidential election. Roughly nineteen (18.9) percent of those who’ve made their choice and plan to go out and vote are ready to support Timoshenko, a survey showed. That being said, Zelensky is backed by 10.7%, while Gritsenko and Poroshenko got 9.9% Boiko is backed by 9.8%