Zelensky named politician of the year

The foundation's analyst, Serhii Shapovalov, presented the results of the survey at Ukrinform on Monday, December 21.

"This year, a relative majority of Ukrainians (14.5%) named the incumbent president as the politician of the year, which was expected in principle. Incumbent presidents always become politicians of the year. They are the most heard, and their actions are the most discussed, both positively and negatively," Shapovalov said.

According to him, European Solidarity party leader and former President Petro Poroshenko took the second place in this ranking, with 9% of Ukrainians seeing him as the politician of the year. At the same time, both politicians are on top of the "Loser of the Year" rating.

According to respondents, the event that affected the lives of the vast majority of people in 2020 was the coronavirus epidemic.

Some 43% of Ukrainians called the epidemic the "event of the year" and, as expected, absolutely everyone assessed it as a negative event. Undoubtedly, Ukrainians called the war in Donbas a negative event of the year. In addition, spring COVID-19 lockdown was named the event of the year by 12%, and this event was also unanimously assessed as negative.

Almost the only positive event was the construction of highways under the Big Construction project - only 5% consider the construction of roads as a negative event. The year 2020 will also be remembered as a year of bad events. In general, only 16% of respondents called positive the events they consider the main events of the year. For comparison, in 2019, the main event of the year (mostly parliamentary and presidential elections) was considered positively by 58%.

According to the analyst, when asked to name the main event of the year in the world, most Ukrainians (38%) named the beginning of the coronavirus epidemic and unanimously assessed this event negatively. Some 16% of Ukrainians named civil protests in Belarus as the event of the year, with 19% considering them as a positive event and 71% describing them as a negative event. Most Ukrainians also assessed the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan as a negative event.

The only positive event in the world for most respondents was the emergence of a COVID-19 vaccine.

The world events of 2020 in the eyes of Ukrainians also remained mostly negative - only 17% of citizens called positive the events they consider the events of the year.

The survey was conducted from December 5 to 13, 2020 in all regions of Ukraine, except for Crimea and the occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. A total of 2,004 respondents were interviewed in 131 populated centers of Ukraine. The poll's margin of error does not exceed 3.3%.

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