Poll: Ukrainians Strongly Oppose Holding Elections During Wartime

For a country that is destabilized by war, Ukrainians remain chipperly optimistic. According to a new poll released by the International Republican Institute (IRI) 85% of respondents feel optimistic about Ukraine's future, a slight dip from IRI's last poll, in February 2023, that found 93% of respondents to be optimistic.

94% of Ukrainians believe that Ukraine will win the war: 73% say it is definite while 21% say it is "most likely." This number has not statistically changed since IRI's first post-invasion poll in April 2022 that found 97% believed that Ukraine would win.

One large change was that now 68% of Ukrainians believe that the nation will return to its 1991 borders - a sharp increase from the February 2023 survey where only 53% expressed such optimism.

As to the world abroad, in a question allowing multiple-responses, 69% of Ukrainians believe that the US helps Ukraine the most, followed by Poland 51%, UK 44%, and Germany 22%, before dropping off to the European Union at 7%.

Despite optimism about the West, only 79% were convinced that Ukraine should join NATO with the rest being unsure except for a 5% directly opposed to joining NATO.

In agreement with Ukraine's Constitution, which forbids elections during martial law, 20% say that Presidential elections should be held now, despite the war, whereas 39% said the same about parliamentary elections, and 15% want to see local elections. Only 19% opposed all elections due to the current situation.

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Even if the elections were to take longer than March 2025 to conclude, 56% said they opposed holding Presidential elections and 52% said they opposed holding Parliamentary elections, due to the war. 85% said there should not be any sort of elections, local or national, until the war has concluded.

Shedding some light on such high numbers 70% of respondents thought it was very or somewhat important that voters located outside of Ukraine be given the opportunity to participate in elections.

96% of people approve of how the Ukrainian military operates while 82% said the same about President Zelensky, followed by Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba at 71%.

However, not everything is so sunny for everybody in Ukraine: The Ukrainian Parliament in April 2022 had 64% of people's approval, but that number is now down to 27%.

The poll of 2,000 Ukrainians, living in free Ukraine, conducted from September 9-12, was executed by the Rating Group. The poll used a 95% confidence level for a margin of error of 2.2% but a response rate of only 12% and was not weighted for sex due to the disproportionate gap in females who have temporarily left Ukraine.

It is estimated that there are 6.2 million Ukrainians temporarily located outside of the country due to the war, and men 18-65 are not allowed to regularly leave the country.