President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who left his main rival Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu behind in the May 14 presidential election but was unable to win a majority of 50 percent to be elected, is also leading in the runoff, according to the results of a survey by the Konda polling company.
Erdoğan and Kılıçdaroğlu, who both failed on May 14 to surpass the 50 percent threshold, will compete in a runoff on Sunday, when the candidate receiving the highest percentage of the nationwide vote will be elected president.
According to results of the May 20-21 survey conducted by Konda with the participation of 3,607 people across 34 provinces, Erdoğan received 47 percent of the vote, while Kılıçdaroğlu garnered 42.2 percent in the runoff without the distribution of undecided voters, who made up 8.2 percent of respondents.
When undecided voters are distributed between the candidates, Erdoğan’s vote rises to 52.7 percent, while Kılıçdaroğlu’s vote goes up to 47.3 percent, which means a victory for Erdoğan.
Before May 14, when Turkey also held parliamentary elections, many polling companies either showed Kılıçdaroğlu defeating Erdoğan or running neck-and-neck with him in the presidential election.
Those poll results seemed to align with the prevailing perception that Erdoğan’s popularity had been affected by skyrocketing inflation and a cost-of-living crisis in Turkey as well as the government’s poor response to two powerful earthquakes that hit the country in February.
Yet Erdoğan received received 49.5 percent of the vote, while Kılıçdaroğlu garnered 44.8 percent, which prompted many polling companies to review their methodologies since the election results bore no resemblance to their predictions.