Sociologists explain why Zelenskyy could lose presidential election to Zaluzhnyi

Volodymyr Zelenskyy could lose the next presidential elections for the same reason he won in 2019 – the public's expectations of positive change from a "new force".

Source: Ukrainska Pravda article, "Are elections possible before the war ends, and who is likely to win?"

Quote: "In the case of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, there is a slow downward trend of support. Trust in him is high, but support for Zaluzhnyi is rising rapidly. He still maintains trust at 80-90%. Plus, as in the situation with Zelenskyy in 2019, voters attribute their own traits and qualities to Zaluzhnyi, projecting the virtues and expectations they want them to have," explained Anton Hrushetskyi, executive director of the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS)

Details: A colleague of Hrushetskyi’s from another polling service admits off the record that with some modelling of the ballot paper, a situation could arise where the balance of power is similar to the 2019 elections. Only this time, the name of the winner will be different. 

As the article points out, in the third year of the full-scale war, the sense of threat has ceased to legitimise the government's actions. All polls in recent months show the same trend – a steady decline in trust in most government institutions that are not directly involved in the defence forces.

The level of trust in President Volodymyr Zelenskyy remains a significant point. His trust balance is currently at +4% (48.5% trust and 44.5% distrust), but with a slow downward trend. 

In fact, support for Zelenskyy, which reached 90% at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, is essentially being held hostage by a general decline in confidence in the system. Moreover, the high support for the army has ceased to translate into the same support for its Supreme Commander-in-Chief, Zelenskyy.

In an environment where the "old old" and "new old" elites do not inspire public trust, a figure like Zaluzhnyi can play a pivotal role.

Moreover, Hrushetskyi says that if we have a hypothetical party led by Valerii Zaluzhnyi – which he hasn’t said a word about yet – it could really gain very high levels of support.

That's why Ukrainska Pravda sources in the Servant of the People party are sceptical about talk of early elections: people don't want them, and the government has every chance of suffering a dramatic defeat, the article says.

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