Petro Poroshenko or Volodymyr Zelensky? This is the question that voters asked themselves in the second round of Ukraine’s presidential election on 21 April. Poroshenko has been head of state for the past five years, while Zelensky, as you’ve probably heard, is a comic actor and entertainment producer. Even before voting had ended, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology released exit polls that put Zelensky at 73% of the vote, and Poroshenko - 25.5%. These figures may yet change with the official count, but it’s unlikely they’ll change significantly, as the results of the first round voting show. On 31 March, the marketing and sociological companies’ predictions were surprisingly precise.
Zelensky gained a high level of votes across Ukraine’s regions, aside from Lviv region in the west, contradicting the concept of “Two Ukraines” divided by the Dnipro river. According to this idea, Ukraine is divided as a state not only geographically, but politically. Regions in the west are drawn towards the European Union, and in the east - towards Russia. Indeed, per this division, issues around state language and historical memory play a crucial role. In public, this idea was most forcefully expressed during the 2004 Orange Revolution and under ex-president Viktor Yanukovych, who fled the country in the wake of the 2014 Revolution.
Still, sociologist Iryna Bekeshkina believes that Zelensky voters share a wide range of views. For example, Bekeshkina cited statistics on Zelensky supporters’ attitudes towards NATO membership - 37% support the idea, 33% support a neutral status for Ukraine, and six percent support a military union with Russia. In Bekeshkina’s opinion, Ukrainian citizens didn’t vote so much for Zelensky, but against Poroshenko.
