LESS than a month before election Sunday and the race for the Presidency is getting even tighter according to the latest polls.
RAI and Insights Market Research (IMR) conducted polls for Phileleftheros and Simerini, respectively.
Both polls agree in the order the candidates will finish in the first round: DIKO candidate President Tassos Papadopoulos first, AKEL candidate Demetris Christofias second and DISY candidate Ioannis Kassoulides third.
MEP Marios Matsaskis comes fourth (2.2 per cent in the RAI one and 1.1 per cent in the IMR one), and independent Costas Themistocleous is fifth at 0.5 per cent in both polls.
Significantly, RAI and IMR agree that the AKEL and DISY candidates are closing the gap on Papadopoulos’ first round lead.
Phileleftheros emphasises that it is the mobilisation of voters in each party that determines the electoral scene.
Whereas AKEL, DISY and DIKO show a respectable mobilisation of 86 per cent, 85.9 per cent and 78 per cent respectively, only two out of three EDEK voters (67.3 per cent) have been loyal to their party’s choice of candidate, while not even one in two European party voters (48.5 per cent) say that they will vote for the incumbent.
Given that both these parties have come out in favour of Papadopoulos, the attitudes of their 2006 voters have damaged the President’s candidacy.
The first round results, therefore, show Papadopoulos at 31.4 per cent, Christofias at 30.2 per cent (the highest he’s ever been awarded in a RAI poll) and Kasoulides at 27.4 per cent.
A total of 8.3 per cent of respondents said that they would either cast a blank vote or not vote or declined to answer the question, thus adding a significant caveat to the RAI results.
In a separate question inquiring about the levels of satisfaction with the government’s handling of the Cyprus problem and its running of domestic affairs, a total of 46 and 47 per cent, respectively, were satisfied on both counts.
The rest of those polled either opted for ‘not so satisfied’ or ‘not at all satisfied’.
These results show little change from the attitudes prevalent in July 2007, but do differ noticeably from the March 2006 attitudes of voters.
Back then, 66 and 60 per cent were the corresponding figures.
Simerini continues the publication of IMR’s running polls, the latest one showing an increase in the number of votes gained by each of the three main candidates.
The first round results this time show Papadopoulos at 33.5 per cent, Christofias closely behind at 32.8 per cent and Kasoulides at 29.8 per cent.
The three biggest parties still show an inability to mobilise all their voters: 11.4 per cent of those who voted for AKEL in 2006 will not vote for Christofias, 13.6 per cent who voted for DISY in 2006 will not vote for Kasoulides, and 16.2 per cent of those who voted for DIKO in 2006 will not vote for Papadopoulos.
In contrast to the RAI poll, the undecided are at just 2.4 per cent.
Another difference with the RAI poll is the findings on the mobilisation of the European party. Although there is agreement on the high levels of loyalty noted among voters of the three biggest parties as well as the straying of EDEK’s voters, IMR’s poll awards a high mobilisation of 81.5 per cent to the European party.
When the Mail inquired as to why this was so, representatives from the two polling companies agreed that this was because of the low representation of European party voters in their samples: the lower the number of people polled, the higher the margin of error.
