Tymoshenko popularity driven by poor, pollsters find

The latest poll of
the 2019 elections confirmed recent trends: former PM Yulia Tymoshenko is the
leading presidential candidate and President Petro Poroshenko’s ratings are slumping.
About 13.3% of decided voters said they will cast their ballot for Tymoshenko,
9.4% for former Defense Minister Anatoliy Grytsenko, 8.4% for Russian-oriented
natural gas trader Yuriy Boyko and 7.6% for Poroshenko, according to the
Kucheriv-Razumkov poll. Tymoshenko’s popularity is driven by the poor, among
which 20% said they will vote for her, pollster Iryna Bekeshkina told the June
5 press conference presenting the results. “There is a distinct difference
based on material wealth,” she said, adding that Poroshenko leads among the
wealthier.

For the 2019
parliamentary elections, eight parties have between 5% and 13% support among decided voters.
Tymoshenko’s Fatherland party has 12.6% support, compared to 10.7% for
Grytsenko’s Civic Position party. The president’s Solidarity party is in sixth
place at 7.8%. About 49.1% support pro-Western parties, while 16.6% support
Russian-oriented parties. “The interregional ideological polarization is
definitely a threat,” political expert Volodymyr Fesenko told the press
conference, referring to the rise of “aggressive pro-Russian, anti-maidan”
sentiments. The For Life party, what has 8.1% support, is “placing a bet on
renewing the conflict” that led to the EuroMaidan, he said.

The poll was
conducted by the Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Fund and the Razumkov Center,
both Western-financed political think tanks in Kyiv. It involved 2,019
respondents who were questioned between May 19 and 25.

Zenon Zawada: While this poll confirms
Tymoshenko’s lead, it also indicates that this lead might have narrowed,
particularly the figures for her Fatherland party. For anyone to challenge
Poroshenko, it’s important for them to have at least a 5% lead in the polls,
ahead of the next contender, heading into the vote. That way the results will
be difficult to discredit. If no one candidate has such a lead, Poroshenko can
easily activate his access to state resources to manipulate vote results in his
favor. That makes it even more critical that Tymoshenko reach some agreement
with the interior minister for his support during the elections. Otherwise, the
more evenly the candidates are polling ahead of the elections, the better
chances for Poroshenko to get re-elected.

Tymoshenko’s strong
standing among the poor stems from her second tenure as prime minister
(2007-2010), when she distributed state payments as “compensation” for bank deposits lost in the Soviet
collapse. She also spearheaded state payments for newborns. What this reveals
is that the average Ukrainian voter is more concerned about the most basic,
immediate economic issues, rather than Western integration or even the war in
Donbas. So if she plays her cards right, Tymoshenko has all the chances to become
the next president (as does Poroshenko).