Zelenskiy enjoys solid lead in election polls

Sketch comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy enjoys a solid
lead over his contenders in the Ukrainian presidential election scheduled for
March 31, according to the latest poll released on Feb. 25. Among decided
voters planning to vote, 26.4% will cast their ballot for Zelenskiy, compared
to 18.0% for President Petro Poroshenko and 13.8% for former Prime Minister
Yulia Tymoshenko. About 33.3% of potential voters remain undecided, according
to the poll conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology between
Feb. 8 and 20 involving 2,042 respondents. Another 4.8% said they will destroy
their ballot, while 3.6% declined to respond.

Zenon
Zawada: Zelenskiy’s candidacy has
stolen the election momentum of Tymoshenko, whose poll numbers have plummeted
directly and inversely to Zelenskiy’s rise. Therefore, we will see more
dramatic attempts by her campaign to recover her position as the opposition
leader, as demonstrated by her call this morning from the parliamentary tribune
for the president’s impeachment. Unless she succeeds, it looks as though the
second-round runoff will be between Poroshenko and Zelenskiy, which works to
the president’s advantage in securing a victory. Though an earlier poll
indicated Zelenskiy’s advantage higher
than 20% in the second round, the president has numerous
instruments at his disposal to chip away at that gap in time for April 21, the
runoff’s scheduled date.