Two places for three

Less three weeks remained until the first round of the presidential election of Ukraine. The first round of elections will be held on March 31. According to public opinion polls, none of the candidates have a chance to gain more than fifty percent of the vote. The second round, in which two candidates will take part, taking the first and second place in the first round, will be held on April 21.

In the first round of elections, 39 candidates will take part, the form and text of the ballot are already approved, the CEC of Ukraine reports on its website. However, there are only three real applicants for participation in the second round, according to experts. This is the head of the race, according to surveys, comedian Vladimir Zelensky, as well as the current President Petro Poroshenko and the head of the Batkivshchina party Yulia Tymoshenko, who are fighting for second place.

Grigory Lvovich Chizhov, Vice-President and Head of the Ukrainian Bureau of Political Technology Center, shared his opinion on the Ukrainian election race with Polit.ru.

Georgy Chizhov

Real applicants for the second round, indeed, are three. Although an event that had been waiting for a long time had recently occurred: Andrei Sadova took his candidacy in favor of Anatoly Gritsenko. Gritsenko also supported several more democratic candidates. But this happened too late for Gritsenko to return to the number of real candidates for the second round. If this happened earlier, he probably could well have claimed something, but now, perhaps, no.

As polls show, Julia Tymoshenko begins to sag. And now it is quite likely that it will not go to the second round. It is impossible to vouch for this yet, but she has been leading in the presidential rating for a very long time, and now her results, according to polls, are no longer so high. Her headquarters makes desperate efforts to stay in the race, so the chances are not completely lost for her. But if we take into account the dynamics of the rating, we can say that Petro Poroshenko and Vladimir Zelensky will be the most likely rivals on the second round.

In favor of this result, the dynamics of Poroshenko’s rating also speaks, he continues to recruit. Yes, and his campaign is slowly structured. In addition, its main electoral reserve is those people who are still evading the answer to the question of who they will vote for. This, of course, to put it mildly, is not fans of Poroshenko. That is, those who do not really want to vote for him. But they cannot choose another candidate for themselves. And most likely they, on the principle of “smaller evil”, will eventually cast their votes to the current president.

Vladimir Zelensky / 112.ua

These reasons explain why the feeling that Poroshenko will win, political scientists, sociologists and even bookmakers will defeat everything. The available data allow us to say that Poroshenko should not win in the second round either Tymoshenko or Zelensky. But at the same time, again, those “refusing to answer” are not taken into account.

Zelensky rating, on the other hand, on the contrary, looks slightly high. Because among those who support him, very many will not come to vote. They usually do not go and this time will not come. Among those who support him are a lot of young people. One sociologist recently shared a curious supervision with me. If the survey is carried out on tablets, that is, the answers are entered in tablets, Zelensky’s rating is four percentage points higher than if the interviewer records the answers on a piece of paper. That is, Zelensky is a candidate of modern youth. But this can play a cruel joke with him. Its voters are quite apolitical and may simply not come. In addition, the second round will be at the height of Easter holidays. And those people who will leave somewhere to rest on the holidays can also not come on April 21. And among the electorate of Zelensky there are more such people.

It is difficult to say whether the calls of candidates who have not passed on the second round will affect the calls of candidates who have not passed on a second round. So, for example, many note that the electorate is Boyko and the electorate of Zelensky to a large extent intersect. But for example, I have the feeling that Zelensky will drag the border voters to himself in the first round. How many will go to him in the second round and how many will be ready to vote at the direction of his candidate, now it is difficult to say. Theoretically, the support of a brisk can, on the contrary, give a bad image and a reduction in the rating.

Ukraine. Preparation for elections / 112.ua

If a couple of finalists will still be Poroshenko-Zelensky, the Poroshenko team, I think, will very seriously process Zelensky voters very seriously. And, as it seems to me, not even discredit Zelensky personally, but to talk about the absurdity of the situation when a person without any experience and understanding of political processes at such a difficult moment can lead Ukraine. But this, perhaps, is a little hurry, because in the second round there may be more than three candidates, but three as many as three. Although today I would still put Zelensky-Poroshenko on a couple, but the intrigue is still preserved. The breaks are small, sociology works poorly, in the sense that it does not allow you to make reliable forecasts, so the remaining weeks, I think, can change a lot in this dynamic situation.