There are two days left before Ukraine will hold presidential elections (on March 31). Latest polls show unexpected result - current president, Petro Poroshenko, will lose to any opponent in the second round. This data was revealed by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology (KIIS). At the same time, second round is inevitable and, according to an informed source in Kiev, authorities thought this scenario through, so there's huge probability that Petro Poroshenko will succeed.
Since victory in the first round is seen as unachievable task under more or less normal election conditions, the main task of the current president is to reach second round. In other to achieve this, it's necessary to ensure Poroshenko gets more votes than leader of Batkivshchyna, Yulia Tymoshenko, especially since showman Vladimir Zelensky already has 23-25% rating (according to polls), so he's ahead of all other candidates and definitely reaches the second round
By the second round, Poroshenko’s team plans to pass a law on the necessity of live TV debates through the Verkhovna Rada. According to today's law, live TV debates between presidential candidates are not obligatory. Most politicians prefer not to take any risks so that they don't look stupid in front of the entire country, that's why they refuse to participate in debates under various pretexts. Instead, they go to various talk shows, where there are no difficult questions.
Poroshenko's team idea is that live TV debates will finally give Poroshenko advantage over Zelensky, who, as it became clear by the end of election campaign, doesn't know much about political matters and knows even less about economic matters. During televised debates, that's exactly where Poroshenko can take Zelensky down, even if Poroshenko himself is not the brightest person.
It's a pretty good plan, so Poroshenko just has to reach the second round. In other words, he has to defeat Yulia Tymoshenko.
“I wouldn't disregard Tymoshenko in any way. She has structure, has dedicated electorate, even fanatical in some ways,” famous expert from Kiev, who is also a member of one of the monitoring groups, told Vestnik Kavkaza. He said that there's something in scenario mentioned above. “Zelensky is completely unprepared for debates on serious level. His headquarters avoids any live contacts. And if he appears on live TV, it only happens on channels controlled by oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, who supports him. And if Zelensky knows certain things about politics, he definitely doesn’t understand economy at all. His anecdotal meeting with representatives of business associations can be easily found on the internet. It was an absolute fail. But the catch is - will Poroshenko’s team be able to force parliament to adopt the law on obligatory TV debates? There's no much time," expert believes. According to him, if they'll manage to do that, it may instead hurt Poroshenko, if he and Yulia Tymoshenko, not Vladimir Zelensky, reach the second round. "The polls show us how overall situation looks. But the fact is that Zelensky's electorate consists of those who got tired of current authorities and youth. This category of electorate may not vote at all, and there will be nothing left of showman's current rating. It's certainly possible that Zelensky's high rating is a reflection of Ukrainian society's attitude towards current authorities. They may think: "Screw this, we're fed up with them, it's better to vote for a real clown." But that's how voters answered the question of opinion poll, how will they actually vote is a completely different matter,” source told Vestnik Kavkaza.
He also said that it's possible that Zelensky’s participation in the elections may be a project of current authorities, because he took many voters from from the Regions Party - former ruling party, headed by pro-Russian politician Yuriy Boyko. “If this is really the project of authorities, then there's nothing to talk about,” expert believes. At the same time, he still finds it difficult to say who exactly will reach the second round, except for Petro Poroshenko, "who will definitely reach it at least thanks to administrative resource."
KIIS's survey shows the following picture: if Poroshenko and Tymoshenko reach the second round, Tymoshenko is going to win. Zelensky will defeat both in the second round. Overall, Poroshenko loses to any opponent in the second round, even to Boyko and Gritsenko, who are in fourth and fifth places in opinion polls. At the same time, his supporters look more confident compared to supporters of other candidates. About 80% of those who are going to vote for Poroshenko are confident in his victory. Only 70% of Tymoshenko’s voters have no doubt that she will become president of Ukraine. Approximately same situation can be seen in Zelensky's camp.
Finally, according to the KIIS, if voting took place today, then Vladimir Zelensky would get 32% of the vote, Petro Poroshenko - 17%, Yulia Tymoshenko - 12-13% percent. Other candidates would get just below 5%.
