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2.5 Polls & Sociology
Opposition leader, former Prime Minister and head of Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party Yulia Tymoshenko ratings dropped in a second poll in September. There is a lot of confusion over the polls which give starkly different results. Tymoshenko’s lead in the presidential race is slipping. About 13.2% of voters said they will vote for her, compared to 7.8% for comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy, according to the poll published on September 25 by the Rating Sociological Group, a private firm that has been conducted polls for more than a decade. It was conducted between September 10 and 18 involving 2,500 respondents. Another poll, released on September 14, said that Tymoshenko has 12.9% support, compared to 8.4% for President Poroshenko. The poll - conducted between August 30 and September 9 of 10,005 respondents - was a joint project between the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, the Razumkov centre, and the SOCIS centre for Sociological and Marketing Research. Early the same month, polls were reporting Tymoshenko’s lead to have widened as much nine percentage points over her nearest rival, which was often former defence minister Anatoliy Grytsenko. Tymoshenko’s support was as high as 17.8%, according to the poll conducted by the Kucheriv Fund/Razumkov centre.
Zenon Zawada of Concorde Capital said in a note. accuses President Petro Poroshenko of paying for polls that understate Tymoshenko’s lead. In order to win re-election, it will be critical for President Poroshenko to chip away at Yulia Tymoshenko’s lead as much as possible, as soon as possible. That way, if Tymoshenko alleges vote fraud, Poroshenko will be able to claim that her small lead in the polls-ahead of the elections- doesn’t back up her claims. And that would reduce the public’s willingness to engage in mass protests. Therefore, we believe it’s possible that the Poroshenko campaign is paying for polls to skew the questions and results against Tymoshenko. The polls conducted by the Kucheriv Fund/Razumkov centre, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology and the International Republican Institute are considered to be most reliable. What’s striking is that two of these organizations were involved in polls this month that produced starkly different results for Tymoshenko. To us, this also reveals that voter sentiments and opinions are volatile, able to change dramatically as the election campaign progresses. At the same time, it’s entirely possible that Tymoshenko is losing momentum as the Poroshenko campaign has intensified attacks against her this month, particularly for allegedly having past ties to the Kremlin. Further polls will be revealing.
Of 100 CEOs surveyed by the European Business Association, 75% forecast ‘positive growth dynamics’ for their businesses in 2019. Of the executives, 59% expect revenue growth over 10% in hryvnia. The government forecasts inflation of 7.4% next year. Of the executives, 58% plan to increase staff in 2019 and 42% plan to increase salaries by 10 to 20% in hryvnia. The consensus exchange rate forecast for 2019 budgets is 30 hryvnia to the dollar.
Two thirds of Ukrainians rely on television as their main source of information, a survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), the Razumkov Center and the Socis Center for Social and Marketing Research found. Three quarters (75.7%) of respondents prefer receiving information about events in Ukraine and the world via watching national TV channels, and half (49.7%) rely on the Internet. Almost for each third Ukrainian (29.5%) friends, colleagues, relatives and neighbours are the source of information. Some 10.4% of Ukrainians receive information via listening to FM radio stations and 10.3% from newspapers and magazines.
Corruption and lack of trust in the judiciary lead the rating of the main obstacles for foreign investors in Ukraine for the third year in a row , according to a survey conducted by Kyiv-based consultancy Dragon Capital,
16 UKRAINE Country Report October 2018 www.intellinews.com