Interfax: Parties led by Poroshenko, Lyashko, Tymoshenko may garner comparable number of votes in Ukrainian parliamentary elections – poll

KYIV. Sept 4 (Interfax) – The Solidarity party led by Petro Poroshenko, the Radical Party led by Oleh Lyashko, and the Batkivshchyna all-Ukrainian association have roughly equal electoral ratings in the run-up to early parliamentary elections scheduled in Ukraine for October 26, 2014, as is seen from a poll conducted by GfK Ukraine.

In particular, 16% of respondents plan to vote for Solidarity, 14% for the Radical Party, and 13% for Batkivshchyna, on the condition that party leader Yulia Tymoshenko and Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk are included among the first candidates on the party ticket, GfK Ukraine Deputy Director Hleb Vyshlynsky said in presenting the results of the poll at a press conference in Kyiv on Thursday.

Another 7% of those polled plan to vote for Civic Position, led by Anatoly Hrytsenko, 6% for UDAR party, led by Vitali Klitschko, if it runs in the elections independently, 6% for Sylna Ukrayina (Strong Ukraine), led by Serhiy Tihipko, 4% for Svoboda (Freedom), led by Oleh Tyahnybok, 3% for the Communist Party of Ukraine, 3% for the Right Sector party, 2% for the Party of Regions (led, as was indicated during the poll, by Renat Akhmetov and Mykhailo Dobkin), 1% for the Samopomich (Self-Assistance) association, led by Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovy, and 1% for the Ukraine Development Party, led by Yury Miroshnychenko.

The poll showed also that 2% of respondents want to vote for other political forces and 22% are undecided.

Nearly 76% of those polled (1,517 out of the 2,000 respondents) said they plan to cast their ballots in the elections.

The company conducted the poll from August 14 to 25, 2014 by personally interviewing 2,000 people aged over 18 at home. Residents of all regions of Ukraine except Crimea were polled. The poll in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions was conducted in areas controlled by Kyiv and in Makiyivka. The margin of error is 2.2%.