TWO POLLS published yesterday, one in a newspaper and one on TV seem to agree on the general trends they describe but not on the details.
Simerini published the second of three rolling polls conducted on a weekly basis by Insights Market Research (IMR).
DIKO candidate President Tassos Papadopoulos is at 32.8 per cent, dropping 0.6 per cent since the last IMR poll on Tuesday.
In conjunction with AKEL candidate Demetris Christofias’ 0.4 per cent rise which gives him a total of 32.5 per cent, this means that the two candidates are separated by a mere 0.3 per cent gap.
DISY candidate Ioannis Kasoulides fell just below the 30 per cent mark, which he had temporarily overcome on Tuesday, and is now at 29.9 per cent.
Independents MEP Marios Matsakis and Costas Themistocleous both show a rise in percentages.
The former is now at 1.4 per cent (0.7 per cent rise) and the latter at 0.6 per cent (a 0.4 per cent rise).
The undecided are at 2.8 per cent, while the poll has a 3.46 per cent margin of error.
The two largest parties of the island, DISY and AKEL show a mobilisation of just under 85 per cent.
The third largest party, which aims to be a third pole of attraction, DIKO, is just above 80.4 per cent.
The other two parties which support Papadopoulos, socialist EDEK and the right-wing European party are showing increasing mobilisation rates.
EDEK is now at 75.6 per cent and the European Party is at 70.8 per cent.
Once again, Kasoulides loses to both his main rivals if he was to make it to the second round, but only if he were to face Papadopoulos is this defeat clear.
Papadopoulos is at 45.3 per cent and Kasoulides is at 38.9 per cent.
In a showdown versus Christofias, however, Kasoulides loses by a margin of 1.6 per cent since he would win 40.1 per cent and Christofias 41.7 per cent.
In the case of a face-off between Papadopoulos and Christofias, the incumbent has a 1.5 per cent lead over his communist rival (42 per cent against 40 per cent).
A large amount of the electorate seems to be opting out of the democratic process in the second round: 37.3 per cent of Kasoulides voters would cast a blank vote if their candidate did not make it through, while 33.2 per cent of Papadopoulos voters and 27 per cent of Christofias voters would do the same if their chosen first round candidates failed to make it to the second round.
Last night, Antenna TV had its own poll released, which was conducted by Evresis at a 2.7 per cent error margin.
The first round results show the candidates in the same order as IMR did.
Papadopoulos is ahead with 33.3 per cent, Christofias comes second with 31 per cent and Kasoulides third with 29.2 per cent.
Thus, Evresis shows Papadopoulos to have a much larger (although still slim) lead from Christofias than IMR did.
Only Kasoulides is shown to have a decrease in votes since Evresis’ last poll in mid-January.
Matsakis and Themistocleous mustered 0.6 per cent between them, which is 1.4 per cent less than what IMR gave them.
The former is at 0.5 per cent and the latter at 0.1 per cent.
The undecided and people who refused to answer were at 3.4 per cent.
In the second round, Kasoulides is shown to lose by a wide margin to either of his two rivals: by 8.9 per cent to Papadopoulos and by 5.6 per cent to Christofias.
These results differ significantly from those of IMR; in this case, Christofias is shown to have an insurmountable lead over the DISY candidate.
Papadopoulos also wins a head-to-head with Christofias, by a narrow 0.4 per cent.
As to the voter mobilisation which emerges from the question “Which party would you vote for if we had parliamentary elections next Sunday?” all three major parties show very high mobilisation rates: 87.6 per cent for DISY, 86.9 per cent for AKEL and 87.8 per cent for DIKO.
