President Gitanas Nausėda remains the most popular politician in Lithuania, followed by social democratic leader and MEP Vilija Blinkevičiūtė, according to a Vilmoru poll. The Social Democratic Party (LSDP) is also leading party rankings.
the respondents had a favourable opinion of Nausėda in October, while 16.5 percent had a negative one. In September, the figures stood at 61.9 and 17.2 percent respectively.
Blinkevičiūtė came in second with 50.8 percent of approval (48 percent in September) and 22.9 percent seeing her unfavourably (23.9 percent in September).
“Blinkevičiūtė […] for the first time has crossed the psychologically important threshold of 50 percent, which is her highest rating,” Vladas Gaidys, who leads Vilmorus, told BNS.
Blinkevičiūtė is followed by Defence Minister Arvydas Anušauskas, Parliament Speaker Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen, and former prime minister, now leader of the opposition party Democratic Union “For Lithuania”.
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis, who is the leader of the ruling conservative Homeland Union-Lithuanian Christian Democrats (TS-LKD) party, is the most unpopular politician in the country, disfavoured by 61 percent of the polled respondents (62.9 percent in September).
Social democrats lead party rankings
The opposition Lithuanian Social Democratic Party (LSDP) remains at the top of the party rankings, followed by the ruling Homeland Union-Lithuanian Christian Democrats (TS-LKD) in second place.
Some 18 percent of respondents said in mid-October that they would vote for the LSDP if general elections were held next Sunday, down from 18.8 percent in September.
The conservative TS-LKD ranked second but support for the ruling party fell to 9.3 percent in the latest poll, from 11.3 percent in September.
“The Social Democrats rank first, as they have been all year, with 18 percent, the Homeland Union has support of 9.3 percent, which may be a decrease [compared to the previous poll], but it is not a trend, they are quite stable,” Gaidys of Vilmorus commented on the results of the poll to BNS.
The opposition party Democratic Union “For Lithuania” moved to the third position with 7.5 percent (5.5 percent in September), swapping places with the Lithuanian Farmers and Greens Union, another opposition party, which came in fourth with 7.3 percent (unchanged from September).
The Liberal Movement, a member of the ruling coalition, closed the top five with 4.7 percent support (4.4 percent in September).
Some 10.8 percent of the polled said in October they would not vote at all (14.7 percent in September) while 27.4 percent said they were undecided (25 percent in September).
Gaidys pointed out that the respondents who chose “other party” from the list often mentioned the National Alliance when asked to name that other party they would vote for.
“It should be noted that the ‘other party’ is the National Alliance, and obviously if it were listed, there would probably be several times more people [ready to vote for it], so this is probably a symptom,” he said.
Vilmorus polled 1,001 Lithuanian residents between October 12–21. The results of the poll have an error margin of up to 3.1 percent.
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