67% of the Armenian population is confident that the leader of the Republican Party of Armenia, Prime Minister Serge Sargsyan will win the forthcoming presidential elections. This is evidenced by the public opinion poll conducted by the British ComRes organization.

[…]

If the poll was conducted this Sunday, 55% of the enfranchised would participate in it. 38% of the voters would cast their ballot in favor of Serge Sargsyan, 13% - for Raffi Hovhannisyan, 12%- for Arthur Baghdasaryan, 8% - Artashes Geghamyan, 6% - Levon Ter-Petrosyan, 5% - Vazgen Manukyan, 4% - Gagik Tsarukyan and 4% - Vahan Hovhannisyan. Aram Karapetyan would receive 1%.

Most of the respondents - 63% - do not believe that the opposition will get united. Only 19% hope for this.

According to the survey results, Serge Sargsyan is the best presidential candidate to deal with the problems Armenia faces. 28% consider he can best solve the issue of unemployment. 20% think Arthur Baghdasaryan can solve it. 19% trust Raffi Hovhannisyan, 6% - Levon Ter-Petrosyan and 3% - Armen Rustamyan.

The full details and results of the poll are broken down and available on the ComRes web site.

ComRes is one of Europe’s leading polling companies, with a strong record of accuracy in polling elections. ComRes polls regularly for international business and media clients including The Independent newspaper, the BBC, Sky News, political parties across the European Union, and a wide range of major business and charity clients

Here’s a summary of some of the conclusions by the poll which also considers that Sarkisian leads the pack .

Serz Sargsyan is regarded by voters as the best candidate, or joint best, likely to solve Armenia’s main problems.

Except for tackling corruption, which Serz Sargsyan shares top place with Artur Baghdasaryan, he has a lead of at least 8% on this measure. This lead is particularly pronounced with respect to dealing with international issues.

On many of the issues tested, Serz Sargsyan was regarded as better able to deal with them than voters’ preferred Presidential candidate.

[…]

56% say they are certain to vote in the elections on February 19th.

55% say that if the elections were ‘this Sunday’ they ‘would definitely vote’.

The full results are available in PDF format here. Until another internationally reputable firm conducts opinion polls and declares otherwise, I have no reason to doubt what’s being revealed by these polls.

That’s especially the case as the results do not come as any real surprise given that this election is more about whether voters hate Serzh more than Levon or vice-versa, and whether they can see any alternative between what some call a choice between two evils.

http://unzipped.blogspot.com/2007/12/undecided-will-decide-fate-of.html

It also puts him ahead of other opposition candidates as well, but the point is the large number of confused and undecided voters.

This again means the pre-election campaign is crucial for everyone and actually makes things very interesting indeed, although potentially very dirty as well.