KIEV, April 18. /TASS/. Around 80% of the Ukrainian voters who cast their ballots for the candidates who were eliminated from the race after the first round of the presidential elections will support showman Vladimir Zelensky, said the director of the Ukrainian Institute for Analysis and Management of Policy, Ruslan Bortnik, assessing the results of a poll conducted by the Ukrainian sociological group Rating.
"Four-fifths of the electorate who voted for the eliminated candidates will support Zelensky, while only one-fifths plan to vote for Poroshenko (and not two-thirds as polls conducted prior to the first round of the elections suggested). This is a result of Poroshenko’s disastrous campaign in the second round: shadow-fighting, billboards with Putin and the smearing campaign against Zelensky," he wrote on his official Facebook page.
According to the expert, the country is currently experiencing "a traditional surge in optimism", when half of the Ukrainians believe in changes for the better.
On Thursday, the Ukrainian sociological group Rating published the poll results which show that almost three-fourths of those who decided which candidate to support are willing to vote for Vladimir Zelensky in the runoff. Among the same respondents, Poroshenko only commands the support of 27%.
At the same time, those who have decided to come to the polling stations, 58% will cast their ballots for Zelensky, and 22% - for Poroshenko. Overall, 52% of the respondents say they will vote for Zelensky, 19% will support Poroshenko, 19% are undecided and 10% said they were not planning to vote.
The runoff of Ukraine’s presidential elections is scheduled for April 21. The first round took place on March 31 and saw Zelensky receiving 30.24% of the votes, almost twice as much as Poroshenko who got 15.95%.