Servant of the People, the party of President Volodymyr Zelensky, still has the highest rating of any faction in the Verkhovna Rada, but it’s nothing like what they had a year ago, right after they won a majority of seats in the 2019 parliamentary elections.
According to the latest poll published by pollster Rating on July 21, only 28% of respondents would now vote for the ruling party, more than twice less than last year.
The poll was conducted on July 16–17, three months before local elections will be held in Ukraine, and 2,000 respondents participated in it.
The pro-Russian Opposition Platform – For Life party received 18% support and was the second most popular political party after Servant of the People. It was followed by the European Solidarity party of ex-President Petro Poroshenko with 14.7%, the Batkivshchyna party of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko with 11.4% and the Radical Party of populist former lawmaker Oleh Lyashko with 5.2%.
Unlike the presidential party, every other leading party saw its rating more than double during the one-year period.
Currently, the gap between Zelensky’s party and the second most popular party in the country decreased more than six-fold, from 56% to 9%.
Zelensky’s personal rating as Ukraine’s president has decreased no less dramatically. Only 37% of the respondents said that they are satisfied with his work, while nearly 60% are not.
Since his landslide victory in the presidential election in April 2019, Zelensky’s rating has consistently fallen from 73% in September to 52% at the end of November and, finally, to 37% today.
Zelensky is not the only politician with a low rating. Only a quarter of respondents are satisfied with the work of Parliament Speaker Dmytro Razumkov and just 16% with Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal.
According to the poll, the most popular steps the parliament took in the past year were re-criminalizing illicit enrichment and making it a crime for lawmakers to vote in place of their colleagues. Ninety percent of respondents approved of these moves.
In February 2019, judges of Ukraine’s Constitutional Court ruled that the country’s law against illicit enrichment violated the presumption of innocence and was, therefore, unconstitutional. Their decision derailed dozens of active corruption cases and sparked a public outcry. After the 2019 parliamentary elections, the new legislature voted to re-criminalize illicit enrichment in October.
Not all of parliament’s decisions have met widespread approval. According to Rating, 60% of the respondents did not support the recent legalization of the gambling industry and the decision to lift Ukraine’s longstanding moratorium on the sale of farmland.
