Poll: Ukrainians don't want early parliamentary elections

The idea of early parliamentary elections is rejected by 43% of Ukrainians, while 37% speak in its favor, according to the sociological survey, released in Kyiv on Tuesday. Should early parliamentary elections happen, 56% of the respondents would vote. If early parliamentary elections were held in the nearest future, six parties would have passed the election threshold - five currently present in the parliament and the Civil Position party. In the meantime, the Batkivschyna All-Ukrainian Union would have collected the most - 12% of the popular vote. Those prepared to vote would give their voices to Samopomich (10.6%), the Petro Poroshenko Bloc (9.9%), the Opposition Bloc (9.1%), the Radical Party of Oleh Liashko can count on 8.4.% of the vote and the Civil Position Party - on 6%. Compared to December 2015, Batkivschyna, the Radical Party, the Civil Position and the Opposition Bloc (4% each) have improved their electoral position. Over the last six months the number of respondents ready to vote but who are still undecided about which party to support significantly decreased from 40% to 13%. At the same time, only a quarter of the population believes that in case of early elections the newly elected composition of the Verkhovna Rada would be better than the current one. A total of 41% of respondents are convinced that the new parliament would be the same as the present one, while 8.5% believe it will be worse. These are the results of a nationwide survey of the Ukrainian population, conducted by the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation along with the sociological service of the Razumkov Centre on May 11-16, 2016. Some 2,016 respondents older than 18 years of age were polled in all regions of Ukraine, except for the occupied territories – Crimea and parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The margin of error is 2.3%.