If elections were held next Sunday, the same three parties that are present today in the Moldovan Parliament would be the only ones to clear the electoral threshold. PAS would be in first place with 33.1% of the vote, followed by the Bloc of Communists and Socialists with 18.7%, and the Shor Part with 7.1%, according to the latest CBS-Research poll commissioned by the WatchDog.MD Community.
17.2% of the respondents said they haven’t decided yet who to vote for, and 11% said they would not vote at all. Of the decided, 47.1% would vote for PAS, 26.6% would vote for BCS, and 10.1% for the Shor Party.
“From January until now, we see a significant increase for PAS (of about 10%), a gradual decrease of more than 3% for BCS and a strong decrease for the Shor Party, which slightly rebounded from last month’s poll, but still remains much lower than in January, for example. Also, we see that the cumulative number of those who say they would not go to the elections or have not yet decided who to vote for or refuse to answer is somewhat lower than in January, when we had 38% in total. In the April poll, we see that these respondents are below 30%”, said WatchDog.MD president Valeriu Pașa during a press conference on Wednesday.
The poll also shows that President Maia Sandu remains the most trusted politician (32.8%), followed by her predecessor, Igor Dodon (8.8%), and Chisinau Mayor Ion Ceban (2.8%). Nearly 38% said they trusted no one and 7.6% did not answer. “We have a changing trend here. Fewer say they don’t trust anyone or don’t answer this question than in previous polls. First of all, there is a clear increase in the level of support for President Maia Sandu, from 24% to almost 33%. Ex-president Igor Dodon also recorded a gradual increase, proportionally important, from 7% to 8.8%”, commented Valeriu Paşa.
When asked which version best describes what is happening now in Ukraine, 43.1% answered that it was an unjustified invasion in which no one provoked the Russian Federation. 22% of respondents believe that Russia defends the so-called people’s republics of Donbass from the attacks of Ukraine, and 11.4% believe that the version that better describes the events in Ukraine is an operation to liberate Ukraine from Nazism. At the same time, 52.21% of respondents believe that the war in Ukraine must be stopped as soon as possible, even at the cost of ceded territory.
More than 65% support the president’s initiative to create a specialized court for high corruption cases, while 58.7% believe that Maia Sandu should personally go to Moscow to negotiate the gas prices (down by almost 5 points compared to March).
There is an increase in the level of support for joining the European Union (58.8%, up 6.9 points compared to March). The share of respondents who are against Moldova joining NATO is also decreasing, although it remains very high (52.6% in April, compared to 55.9% in March).
The poll was conducted by telephone during April 4-13 on a sample of 1,115 people aged 18 and over, with the financial support of the European Union through Internews.
