 continued to decline, while 51.9 percent of Turkish voters are against the re-election of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.){kind=link}
Support for Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) continued to decline, while 51.9 percent of Turkish voters are against the re-election of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, local media reported on Thursday, citing the results of a survey conducted by the Yöneylem Social Research Center.
According to the poll, which was conducted on 2,400 voters in 27 provinces earlier this month, 51.9 percent of participants said they would “never” vote for Erdoğan in a presidential election in June, while 33.6 said they would “definitely” vote for him and 13.9 percent said they may or may not vote for him.
When asked “If the presidential election were to be held next Sunday, would you vote for Erdoğan or the opposition candidate?” 52.5 percent of participants answered they would support the opposition candidate.
The survey also showed that Erdoğan would be defeated by each of his three potential rivals — main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) Chairman Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the party’s İstanbul mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu, and its Ankara mayor, Mansur Yavaş — in a presidential election in which one of them is running against the incumbent president.
In the event that Erdoğan and Kılıçdaroğlu qualify for the second round of a presidential election, the CHP leader would receive 45.2 percent of the vote and Erdoğan would get 42.5 percent, according to the poll, which also showed that İmamoğlu would receive 50.1 percent against Erdoğan’s 40.5 percent and Yavaş would garner 55.9 percent against the current president’s 36.4 percent in a similar scenario.
When respondents were asked the open-ended question “Which party would you vote for in a general election this Sunday?” 32.1 percent said they would vote for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), followed by the main opposition CHP (25.5 percent), the İYİ (Good) Party (13.5 percent), the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) (9.7 percent), the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) (8.1 percent), the Victory Party (ZP) (2.7 percent), the Turkish Workers’ Party (TİP) (2 percent), the New Welfare Party (YRP) (1.9 percent), the Democracy and Progress Party (DEVA) (1.5 percent), the Homeland Party (MP) (1 percent), the Felicity Party (SP) (0.6 percent) and other parties (1.4 percent), with undecided votes distributed among the parties.
According to the poll, the AKP increased its votes by 0.7 and the MHP by 0.9 percent compared to the previous survey conducted by Yöneylem, while the CHP lost 0.8 percent and its ally, İYİ Party, lost 0.4 percent in the same period.
In the last general election held in June 2018, the AKP garnered a nationwide vote of 42.6 percent. However, surveys showed the party’s public support to be slipping.
Erdoğan, whose ruling AKP has been in power as a single-party government since 2002, was elected president in 2014 and re-elected in 2018. His election in 2018 was under a presidential system as Turkey switched from a parliamentary to a presidential system of governance with a public referendum in 2017.
Under the presidential system, Erdoğan is accused by critics of establishing one-man rule in the country, engaging in massive corruption and using the state’s resources for the benefit of his family and cronies while the Turkish people are overwhelmed by the increasing cost of living caused by the depreciation of the Turkish lira and a record level of inflation at around 84.4 percent, according to official figures.