Poroshenko’s confidence rating in Ukraine more than halved during the year

Public confidence in President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko is slumping.  During the year, it fell from 47% (at the moment of inauguration in June 2014) to 17%, according to Gallup survey published on December 23.

“President Petro Poroshenko is now less popular than his predecessor Viktor Yanukovych was before he was ousted. After more than a year in office, 17% of Ukrainians approve of the job that Poroshenko is doing. This approval rating is down sharply from 47% a few months after his election in May 2014,” the survey titled “Ukrainians Disillusioned with Leadership” reads. According to the survey, the pre-coup President, Viktor Yanukovych, enjoyed the support of about 20% of Ukrainians while in office.

“Poroshenko is not popular in any region of Ukraine. He has the fewest fans in the country's Russian-leaning South and East, where one in 10 or fewer approve of the job he is doing. However, Poroshenko notably also has fewer admirers in the West and South and East than Yanukovych did before the revolution. In the Central and North regions (which include Kiev), roughly as many Ukrainians approve of Poroshenko now (21%) as approved of Yanukovych (20%) in 2013,” the survey reads.

According to the document, the faith of Ukrainians in their national government is even lower – 8%. Only 5% of the polled said the government does enough to fight corruption in the country. More than half of the polled (65%) said the “government is leading Ukraine in the wrong direction.”

The Gallup survey results are based on face-to-face interviews with 1,000 adults, aged 15 and older, conducted in July and August 2015 in Ukraine. For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is ±3.8 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting.

It is noteworthy that the previous surveys reflect how disillusioned were Ukrainian with the government efforts to fight the economic problems and overall corruption, as well as with the “special operation” in the east of Ukraine.

According to another survey by The International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), only 5% of Ukrainians said the government managed to meet the demands of the Maidan participants. The rating of Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s People’s Front Party is just 1%.