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#42 - JRL 2007-149 - JRL Home
Four Parties Can Win Seats In Rada - Poll

KYIV. July 5 (Interfax) - The Party of Regions, the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, the People's Union Our Ukraine and the Communist Party could win seats in the Verkhovna Rada in elections according to a poll conducted by the Shevchenko Institute of Political and Sociological Studies.

The poll indicates that the Party of Regions could muster 26.3% of the vote, the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc 22.7%, the People's Union Our Ukraine 10.2% and the Communists 3.1%, Vladimir Bondarenko, the chairman of the institute's board of directors, told a news conference.

The People's Self-Defense Bloc, led by Yuriy Lutsenko, and the Progressive-Socialist Party also have chances of each getting 2.1%. The People's Party could win 1.2% of the vote; the Socialist Party 1.3%, the Rukh - Ukrainskaya Pravytsya party, comprising Popular Rukh and the Ukrainian People's Party - 1.1%; the Sobor Ukrainian Republican Party 0.2%; and the All Ukraine Association Svoboda (Freedom) 0.01%.

About 13.4% of those polled could not tell whether they would vote at all in the elections, 9.79% said they would not vote and 5.1% plan to vote against all candidates.

The Party of Regions could fail to repeat its result scored in the 2006 parliamentary elections, Bondarenko said.

The poll was conducted between June 25 and July 1 and involved 2,027 respondents. The margin of error is 2.4%. It was launched before news of a declaration of unification signed by ten parties surfaced.