(Institute for War & Peace Reporting) With less than a month to go until Ukraine’s presidential elections, President Petro Poroshenko’s coalition looks to dominate the vote, although nearly a third of voters remain undecided.
According to a poll carried out last month by the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives foundation, the Petro Poroshenko Bloc has a clear lead with 26.9 per cent.
In second place was the populist Radical Party with 6.2 per cent and Batkivschyna, led by former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, was third with 5.5 per cent. Other pollsters put Batkivschyna second and the Radicals behind.
The October 26 election will be overshadowed by the conflict in the east of the country, where separatist leaders say they will prevent people voting and instead hold their own ballot in November. Crimea, annexed by Russia in March, held an election for its assembly last month. […]
“Samopomich is just one of many new democratic parties which hold very similar views, but all of which are separated from each other, so that they cannot achieve a cumulative effect in voter percentages,” political scientist Olexiy Haran told IWPR. “It isn’t enough to have some progressive ideas that satisfy a sophisticated and well-informed Facebook audience. “You need a fairly comprehensive political narrative and a developed network of regional organisations in order to gain recognition among the broader population.”
Haran said the high level support for the Petro Poroshenko Bloc was attributable to the president’s pragmatic approach, but he warned its appeal could fade if it failed to convince voters that it had taken action against corruption or that it could end the war in the east. […]
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