On Sunday, May 28, the second round of the presidential elections started in Türkiye. The current head of state Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu are running for the highest public office.
Polling stations in 81 provinces of the country started working at 08:00 local time (coincides with Moscow time) and will work until 17:00. More than 191,000 ballot boxes have been set up across the country and beyond. The number of voters exceeds 60 million people.
According to Turkish media, about 600,000 people, over 70 helicopters, 61 drones and 8 aircraft will provide security for the elections.
First round results
In the first round, which took place two weeks ago, none of the candidates received 50% of the votes necessary for victory. At that time, 49.52% of the votes were cast for the incumbent president, and the opposition representative received 44.88%. Another candidate for the post of head of state, Sinan Oğan, won 5.17% of the vote. After the first round, he called on his supporters to vote for Erdoğan in the second round.
Poll data
According to opinion polls, the favorite in the second round is Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Thus, according to the Özdemir Araştırma center, the current head of state will be ahead of his rival by 8% of the vote (thus, they claim that the results be - 54% versus 46%). Before the first round, the center predicted that Erdoğan would enlist the support of 48.4% of the voters (in the end he won 49.52%), and Kılıçdaroglu would receive 45.2% (in the end he got 44.88%). Now, many sociologists predict Erdoğan's victory by at least 5% of the vote. At the same time, one should not forget that most of the opinion polls conducted in Türkiye on the eve of the first round of elections turned out to be wrong.
