Yanukovych, Tymoshenko, Yatseniuk have chance to win presidential election – poll

If the presidential election in Ukraine took place next Sunday, Party of Regions leader Victor Yanukovych, BYuT leader Yulia Tymoshenko, and ex-Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada Arseniy Yatseniuk would get the biggest support of electors.

These are the results of a poll carried out by Sophia Center for Social Studies and presented at a press conference in UNIAN on Thursday by Oleksander Levtsun, director of Center’s sociological programs department.

In particular, some 24.8% of those polled would vote for Victor Yanukovych, some 16.6% - for Yulia Tymoshenko, and some 14.7% - for Arseniy Yatseniuk.

At the same time, some 3.7% of respondents would vote for Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko, some 3.5% - for Verkhovna Rada Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn, some 2.1% - for President of Ukraine Victor Yushchenko, some 1.3% - for Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok, some 1.1% - for ex-Defense Minister Anatoliy Hrytsenko, and some 1.0% - for Serhiy Tigipko. Other candidacies would receive less than 1% of votes.

According to the results of the poll, if Victor Yanukovych and Yulia Tymoshenko would enter the second round of the presidential election, the Party of Regions leader would have better chances to win. Thus, in the second round, some 35% of those polled are ready to vote for Victor Yanukovych, and some 29.6% - for Yulia Tymoshenko.

At the same time, an overwhelming majority of respondents is skeptical about the chances of Victor Yushchenko to be re-elected for the second term: some 79.9% of those polled are confident that he has no chances, some 14.6% believe he has a little chance, and some 2.9% believe that Victor Yushchenko may become the President of Ukraine for the second time.

The poll was carried out on May 13-22 in all the regions of Ukraine. On the whole, 2013 respondents were involved. The error margin does not exceed 2.2%.