Ukrainians don’t trust the integrity of online voting in elections. Findings of a social survey
Delovoy Stolitsa, together with New Image Groupe, has launched a series of rapid public opinion surveys on the most discussed issues in society.
This study examines Ukrainians’ willingness to participate in elections, their opinions on the advisability of online voting, and their electoral preferences for political parties.
According to the survey results, 47% of respondents do not support holding elections at various levels in the near future, while 36.5% supported the idea. Another 16.5% were undecided.
Moreover, 47% of respondents believe that holding presidential elections is the country’s top priority, 22% believe that re-election of parliament should come first, and only 8% favor holding local elections first. Meanwhile, almost a quarter of respondents (23%) were undecided.
At the same time, 56% of survey participants expressed doubt that fair and transparent elections could be held in the context of a full-scale war. Only 27% of respondents were confident that elections could be held in the near future in compliance with all regulations, while 17% were unsure.
Ukrainians also doubt that the election process will be safe for voters during a full-scale war—65% of respondents believe this is impossible. Only 20% believe the election process can be organized safely, and 15% chose the “don’t know” option.
Respondents also have a negative attitude toward the idea of online voting. Thirty-one percent of respondents rated this option as positive or somewhat positive, while 44% rated it as somewhat negative or negative. Meanwhile, 18% of respondents were neutral toward the idea of online voting, and another 7% were unable to choose either option.
Similar results were obtained when assessing attitudes toward online voting in the upcoming Ukrainian presidential election: 30% of respondents chose the options “positive” and “somewhat positive,” while 48% chose the options “somewhat negative” and “negative.” Another 16% of respondents chose the option “neutral,” and 6% chose “I don’t know.”
More than half of respondents (50.5%) fear that online voting in the presidential election could be used to falsify the results and could also become a tool for external influence. At the same time, 36% of respondents note that online voting will allow Ukrainians living abroad and military personnel stationed at the front to participate. Meanwhile, 13.5% were undecided about the risks and benefits of online voting.
Regarding electoral preferences, respondents were asked to choose which party they would vote for in the upcoming Verkhovna Rada elections. The top three included the parties of Valeriy Zaluzhny (13.2%), Volodymyr Zelenskyy (11.1%), and Petro Poroshenko’s European Solidarity (8.4%). It should be noted that party ratings vary within the margin of error.
The survey was conducted online using an interactive structured questionnaire, a link to which was sent to potential respondents from the CAWI database. Sample size: 800 respondents. Geography: Ukraine (excluding settlements in the temporarily occupied territories of parts of Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk, and Kherson oblasts, and the occupied Autonomous Republic of Crimea). The margin of error with a probability of 0.95 does not exceed 3.54% (excluding the design effect).
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