Ukraine voters express strong interest in Oct. 25 vote, poll reveals

About 47 percent of Ukrainian voters said they will certainly participate in the Oct. 25 local elections, according to poll results released on Oct. 21 by the Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Fund and the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology. Another 27.5 percent said they will likely participate, leading Democratic Initiatives Director Iryna Bekeshkina to predict about a 60 percent voter turnout. The highest interest was expressed in the westernmost regions of Ukraine, while the lowest was in the easternmost. About 37.5 percent of voters have yet to decide on who to vote for.

Only 12 percent of Ukrainians know about the new law approved for the Oct. 25 elections, the same poll reported. Another 48.5 percent “heard something about it” while 38 percent don’t know anything about it. About 20 percent of Ukrainians know how the elections will be held, while 48 percent “heard something about that” and 23 percent don’t know at all. Only six percent of Donbas residents know about the new law and only 10 percent know how the elections will be held, the least among Ukraine’s regions. The poll surveyed 2,040 respondents between Oct. 8 and 20.

About 13.5 percent of voters are ready to sell their vote, compared to 7.7 percent in the same year-ago month. About 74 percent reject such a proposal, the same poll reported. About 58 percent of respondents have a negative attitude towards candidates distributing gifts such as food and medicine and “categorically reject voting for such candidates.” About 20 percent of the residents of the Donbas region are ready to accept such gifts, the most among Ukraine’s regions.

Zenon Zawada: Bekeshkina seems on target with her voter turnout projection of 60 percent, which we consider to be quite strong in a time of war and economic depression. We expect strong results for the Solidarity Petro Poroshenko Bloc as the president’s party, the Opposition Bloc as the leading Russian-oriented force, Fatherland and Oleh Liashko’s Radical Party as populist forces and Svoboda as the nationalist force.

We expect Vitali Klitschko will handily win re-election as Kyiv mayor, representing the Poroshenko Bloc. The notoriously corrupt Hennadiy Kernes should get re-elected as mayor of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city. The most intense competition will occur for mayor of Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine’s fourth largest city, between Borys Filatov, representing the Ukrop party launched by industrial magnate Igor Kolomoisky, and Oleksandr Vilkul, representing the interests of industrial magnate Rinat Akhmetov. Another interesting mayoral race is unfolding in Odesa, Ukraine’s third largest city, where there’s no clear favorite among five main competitors.

With an unusually complicated elections law adopted in July, the elections will be widely criticized for fraud as well as unintentional errors, as many election commissioners and party operatives are themselves unfamiliar with the nuances of the new rules. We expect a flood of accusations of vote-buying, ballot-stuffing and other forms of vote-rigging as competition between business groups is as fierce as ever. Yet Western governments and institutions will have no interest in raising criticism because they have a vested interest in working with Poroshenko and maintaining stability.