New opinion poll on election preferences presented by sociologists from KOG institute and Demokratijos projektai

Opinion poll, released on March 27, 2017 by KOG Institute and Demokratijos projektai, pollsters from Europe shows that bloc Tsarukyan is leading the race with 40,4%, leading over Republican Party with 19,4%. Other parties are ranked by preferences of citizens are Bloc “Oganyan-Raffi-Oskanyan” (8,7%), Bloc Elk (4,1%), “Armenian Renaissance” (3,9%), Dashnakcution (3,8%), Armenian National Congress (3,15%), Free Democrats (1,7%) and Communist party (0,9%). Some 15% of questioned admitted refused to answer or had no answer. Among political leaders, the leading trio of those whom Armenians trust the most are Gagik Tsarukyan (71,2%), Karen Karapetyan (29,9%) and Seyran Oganyan (25,65%).

At the poll presentation today, Mr. Mindaugas Lapinskas, pollster, and Dr. Marius Kalanta stressed that change is an overhelming theme in these elections. Those considering that a country needs radical change is 77%. “We have asked respondents to rate the need for change in Armenia on a 10 point scale, where 0 is “no change needed” and 10 is “change everything”. 3 out of 4 respondents say that a country needs change of a level 6-10. This means that candidates that are able to symbolise change are likely to be preferred by the electorate.”, commented Dr. Marius Kalanta, a sociologist.

Change theme is not surprising, because evalution of the state of affairs, governments’ record and results achieved are rated very low. 5 out of 6 respondents are dissatisfied in the state of affairs in the country. Of areas of reponsibility of the government, only situation with security is  evaluated positive or partially positive by more than half of the respondents. On the contrary, social justice is considered the weakest link with 87% of respondents giving “clearly negative” or “partially negative” evaluation of the government’s record.

Armenians have very high hopes with elections. However, fairness of election process still remains an issue. According to Mindaugas Lapinskas, pollster, “3 out of 5 respondents think that fair vote count will be a problem and it will influence the results significantly. All the candidates and parties should take this as a warning sign.”

The poll was conducted March 8-17 2017, by a method of face to face interviews in all the country. Sample size was 1000, margin of error 3%.