Poll: 62% of Ukrainians favor postponing elections until after war

Authored by kyivindependent.com and submitted by Silly-avocatoe
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62% of Ukrainians believe that elections should only be held after the war is over, according to a poll published by the International Republican Institute (IRP) on Oct. 24.

According to the results of the survey, only 22% of respondents prefer to see elections take place as early as March 2024, 6% would like to see elections take place as early as September 2024, and 3% in March 2025, if the war is still ongoing at those times.

A vast majority of respondents believe that Ukrainian diaspora communities should participate in Ukrainian elections, with 70% of respondents believing it is "very important" or "somewhat important" that Ukrainians outside the country vote in any upcoming elections, as opposed to 28% of respondents believing that the issue is "somewhat not important" or "not important at all."

Under Ukraine's Constitution, elections are prohibited while the country is in a state of martial law.

In addition to questions posed about upcoming elections, respondents were also asked about Ukrainians' support for being included in NATO.

79% of Ukrainians would vote in a referendum to join NATO, if one was held, with 5% intending to vote against joining the bloc of nations. The results highlight a 20 percentage point increase since April 2022, when 59% of respondents supported Ukraine joining NATO.

When asked about respondents' support for Ukrainian government officials, President Zelensky topped the list of support with 82% of respondents indicating they "approve" of the work the President is doing, down slightly from 89% in February 2023.

Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba scored second on the list with 71% of respondents approving his performance, followed by Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, with 59% of respondents approving of his performance.

A random sample of 2,000 Ukrainians respondents was conducted September 9-12 through computer-assisted telephone interviews. The results are deemed accurate within 2.2 percentage points 19 times out of 20.

zzlab on October 30th, 2023 at 06:32 UTC »

Too many people focus on the actual Election Day logistic. But that is not the part that is challenging to democracy. Democracy is not about going and throwing in a piece of paper. It is about fair competition. It means freely being able to criticize your opponents, highlight their flaws and convince people why they should abandon the other candidates. This means telling a nation under existential threat and risk of being destroyed why their current leadership is doing everything wrong (which you can’t even be sure about since most of it is justifiably a military secret). So as a candidate who is also a patriotic citizen you have to choose between sustaining unity of your nation and splitting it because you want part of it to lose faith in current leadership. This is an impossible choice and this is why elections cannot and should not happen under the current conditions of high intensity war. This will not be democracy, this will be window dressing imitating democracy regardless of how safe you make the actual Election Day.

AlbertaMadman on October 30th, 2023 at 02:53 UTC »

Having an election during an active war would be an incredibly horrible idea. Every single polling station would become a target for Russian missle strikes.

Silly-avocatoe on October 30th, 2023 at 02:38 UTC »

Text: poll is from Oct 24.

Poll: 62% of Ukrainians favor postponing elections until after war

by Dmytro Basmat

October 30, 2023 2:35 AM

2 min read

A polling booth during the parliamentary elections in Kyiv, Ukraine, 21 July 2019. (Photo by Sergii Kharchenko/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

62% of Ukrainians believe that elections should only be held after the war is over, according to a poll published by the International Republican Institute (IRP) on Oct. 24.

According to the results of the survey, only 22% of respondents prefer to see elections take place as early as March 2024, 6% would like to see elections take place as early as September 2024, and 3% in March 2025, if the war is still ongoing at those times.

A vast majority of respondents believe that Ukrainian diaspora communities should participate in Ukrainian elections, with 70% of respondents believing it is "very important" or "somewhat important" that Ukrainians outside the country vote in any upcoming elections, as opposed to 28% of respondents believing that the issue is "somewhat not important" or "not important at all."

Under Ukraine's Constitution, elections are prohibited while the country is in a state of martial law.

In addition to questions posed about upcoming elections, respondents were also asked about Ukrainians' support for being included in NATO.

79% of Ukrainians would vote in a referendum to join NATO, if one was held, with 5% intending to vote against joining the bloc of nations. The results highlight a 20 percentage point increase since April 2022, when 59% of respondents supported Ukraine joining NATO.

When asked about respondents' support for Ukrainian government officials, President Zelensky topped the list of support with 82% of respondents indicating they "approve" of the work the President is doing, down slightly from 89% in February 2023.

Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba scored second on the list with 71% of respondents approving his performance, followed by Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, with 59% of respondents approving of his performance.

A random sample of 2,000 Ukrainians respondents was conducted September 9-12 through computer-assisted telephone interviews. The results are deemed accurate within 2.2 percentage points 19 times out of 20.