‘Black Thursday’ shook up expectations for Lithuania’s future governing coalition

The so-called black Thursday on May 12, when law enforcement officers carried out searches at the home of the former leader of the Liberal Movement Eligijus Masiulis and allegedly found €106,000 in bribe money, changed the public’s expectations about the make-up of the next government after the parliamentary elections this autumn.

As May polls by the public opinion and market research company Sprinter reveal, compared to the situation a month before, more people would prefer the current coalituin of the Social Democrats, the Labour Party and Order and Justice.

There are also more supporters of the combination of the Homeland Union-Lithuanian Christian Democrats and the Peasant and Greens Union.

In turn, numbers of those who believe that the Social Democrats and the Liberal Movement could form a coalition have significantly diminished.

Over the month since the “black Thursday”, the number of people who would prefer the status quo in the coalition increased from 14.7% to 18.5%.

The ranks of supporters of the Social Democratic-Peasant and Greens coalition expanded from 11.6% to 13%.

The conservative-green coalition is the third most-favoured with 8.9%, up from only 2.6% last month.

The number of Liberal Movement and Peasant and Greens Union coalition supporters have slightly decreased from 7.4% to 6.8%. Support for the Social Democrat-Liberal coalition has dropped from 13.6% to 5.6%.

A coalition of the Liberal Movement and the conservative Homeland Union has lost some support, dropping to 3% from 7.2% a month before.

Support for the so-called rainbow coalition of the Social Democrats and the Conservatives dropped from 4.3% to 1.6%.

DELFI