Tymoshenko says no mass protest, polls show her loss

Yulia Tymoshenko, a leading candidate for the
Ukrainian presidency, said on March 28 that her Fatherland party won’t initiate
mass protests of the election results. “I know a situation currently is
somewhat aggressively being incited in the country,” she told the 1+1
television network in an interview. “They’re talking about some new maidans,
uprisings, violent conflicts. I can tell you that there won’t be anything like
that.” At the same time, she accused the all the leading polling firms of being
bought by her rivals, indicating that she won’t concede defeat. “You know that
the polls and social surveys are absolutely bought, with repurchased and
distorted political technologies, which I ask that the entire country not pay
attention to.”

Ivan Bakanov, the campaign manager for dark horse
candidate Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said his campaign will be ready to file a
complaint against the first-round results, but hopes it won’t need to. He said
staff members include those who successfully overturned the 2004 presidential
election results (what is known as the Orange Revolution). “The sociology
currently is such that if we don’t qualify for the second round, that will
confirm mass falsifications, in our view,” he said.

The last polls before the first-round vote of the
presidential elections, to be held on Sunday March 31, were released on March
28. Among decided voters, Zelenskiy has 26.6% support, compared to 17.2% for President
Poroshenko and 17.2% for Tymoshenko, according to a poll conducted by the
Rating Sociological Group between March 22 and 27 of 3,000 respondents. In a
second poll released the same day, Zelenskiy had 28.5% support among decided
voters, compared to 18.8% for Poroshenko and 13.3% for Tymoshenko. The survey
of 1,600 respondents was performed between March 20 and 26 by the Kyiv
International Institute of Sociology with the Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives
Fund.

Three other polls were announced the same day, each
confirming Zelenskiy’s lead (with 23%-29% of decided votes) though differing in
their estimates of the runner up. The first pointed to Poroshenko’s close second place finish,
while the other two (produced by lesser known firms) indicated the potential
for Tymoshenko and even Yuriy Boyko coming in second place.

Zenon Zawada: With her
desperate rhetoric smearing all polls (which is rather irresponsible on her
part), it sounds as if Tymoshenko has already prepared for her defeat. Indeed
Tymoshenko would love to launch another maidan protest on Monday, but as we
have consistently said, she doesn’t have enough supporters to do so. Instead
she will be relying on the National Corps and National Squads – widely
recognized to be controlled by her political ally, Arsen Avakov – to hold what
we expect to be weekly protests numbering in the few thousands.

In the meantime, Tymoshenko and her allies will be
holding press conferences alleging vote fraud and rejecting the legitimacy of
the results. It will be particularly interesting to see to what extent Avakov
will criticize the election results, and whether he will go so far as to reject
their legitimacy.

These protests will continue into the second-round
runoff scheduled for Apr. 21. If authorities determine Poroshenko to have
defeated Zelenskiy (amid conflicting exit poll evidence), the protests have the
potential to swell. But ultimately, we don’t believe the opposition has enough
support and organization to challenge the results if they’re in favor of
Poroshenko, unless the violations are egregious (which we don’t expect either).

All in all, we expect Zelenskiy to finish in first and
Poroshenko in second in the Sunday vote, with Tymoshenko closely behind in
third place. Being president and facing off against a sketch comedian with no
government experience, Poroshenko has the advantage to win the second round
(scheduled for Apr. 21), despite Zelenskiy’s enormous current lead in runoff
polls.