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Tymoshenko’s popularity ratings soar up in Ukraine — poll

According to the pollster, Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchina (Fatherland) party would have been the leader in parliamentary elections if such had taken place now in Ukraine

Yulia Tymoshenko EPA/SERGEY DOLZHENKO

Yulia Tymoshenko

© EPA/SERGEY DOLZHENKO

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KIEV, March 16 /TASS/. Ukraine’s Former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko is a more popular politician in Ukraine than incumbent President Petro Poroshenko, a Ukrainian public opinion poll suggests.

Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchina (Fatherland) party would have been the leader in parliamentary elections if such had taken place now, the Kiev International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) revealed in a survey on the socio-political situation in Ukraine carried out from February 23 to March 8, 2016.

"If the presidential elections in Ukraine had taken place in mid-March, 10.9% of Ukrainians older than 18 years old would have voted for Yulia Timoshenko," KIIS, which published the poll results on Wednesday, said.

Ukraine’s incumbent President Petro Poroshenko, the popularity ratings leader until recently, would have got 9.3%; radical Oleg Lyashko - 6.3%; Andrei Sadovyi, the Lviv mayor and the leader of the Samopomich (Self-Help) party - 5.4%; Former Defense Minister Anatoly Gritsenko - 5% and opposition leader Yuri Boiko - 4.9%, respectively.

Timoshenko would have also won the runoff presidential elections with 25.2% if such had taken place in 2016. Poroshenko would have fallen behind in the second round with 16.4% of the votes. According to the poll, 41.3% of respondents said they would not have voted at all, had the elections been held next Sunday.

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In addition to that, 12.9% of respondents said they would like to see Tymoshenko as Ukraine’s potential prime minister (the level of support is more than for any other Ukrainian politician). By comparison, Lyashko and Sadovyi would have got just 6.5% of the votes. For the moment, they are less popular than Mikhail Saakashvili, Georgia’s ex-president and the incumbent governor of the Odessa region, who was supported by 9.9% of respondents.

Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchina (Fatherland) party would have won the elections to Verkhovna Rada and would have been ahead of the Opposition Bloc by (6.7%); the Petro Poroshenko Bloc (5.8%); Samopomich (Self-Help) and radicals (5.5% respectively). Other political forces in Ukraine would have failed to surpass a 5% threshold.

The Kiev International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) polled 2,039 respondents in 110 populated localities in various parts of Ukraine in February-March 2016.

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Ukraine crisis Yulia Timoshenko Public opinion

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