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Zelensky’s approval rating dips below 50%, poll indicates

About 40% of those polled said they had no faith in the president

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky AP Photo/Thibault Camus

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky

© AP Photo/Thibault Camus

KIEV, February 3. /TASS/. For the first time, domestic public opinion of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has plummeted below 50%, indicates a survey carried out by the Social Monitoring Center and Alexander Yaremenko Institute for Social Research.

According to the research, Zelensky earned the trust of 49.4% of the Ukrainians surveyed. Of them, 20.7% fully trust him, while another 28.7% say they somewhat trust him.

About 40% of those polled said they had no faith in the president. As many as 20.5% have no trust in him whatsoever, while 18.8% tended not to trust him. The other surveyed people were undecided.

The prime minister’s score was worse than President Zelensky’s rating. As many as 68.3% Ukrainians viewed the government led by Prime Minister Alexey Goncharuk negatively, according to the poll, while 65.5% do not trust the prime minister in particular.

The parliament gets almost the same level of disapproval, with 68.5% of the Ukrainians surveyed saying they have no trust in the Verkhovna Rada, and 52.6% of them have no faith in its Speaker Dmitry Razumkov.

The survey was carried out on January 24-28 in all regions of Ukraine with the exception of the territories not under Kiev’s control. As many as 2,003 people were polled.

Zelensky’s approval rating has plummeted to a record low level since he assumed the presidency. The results of the opinion poll made public on December 19, 2019, showed that 67% of Ukrainian nationals trusted him, while 25% had no trust in the president. This means that the approval rating has dropped by more than 17% in just a month-and-a-half.

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Late October polls suggested that Zelensky’s positions in Ukrainian society had faltered. The figures of the survey carried out by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology on November 28, demonstrated that Zelensky’s approval rating had dropped to 52%. This trend persisted throughout the autumn with 73% of polled Ukrainians supporting the president in September, while 66% backed him in October and 64% early in November.

Zelensky, who ran for president on the Servant of the People’s party ticket, clinched a landslide victory, garnering 73.22% of the vote, while his rival in the runoff, then President Pyotr Poroshenko secured just 24.45% of the vote.

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