Liberals, Order and Justice party wouldn’t win Seimas mandates

The top three most popular parties remained unchanged. About a month until the Oct. 9 elections, the ruling Social Democrats secured support of about 16 percent of respondents, while 12.6 percent and 9.2 percent said they would vote for the Lithuanian Peasant and Green Union and the conservative Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian Democrats, respectively.

Following a slight recovery after the corruption scandal, the Liberal Movement is again going down on the popularity scale, with votes of 2,7 percent of those polled, down from 5.9 percent in July.

Vladas Gaidys, director of the Vilmorus polling company that conducted the survey, expressed certitude that the decline was caused by public media statements by the party’s former leader Eligijus Masiulis faced with corruption suspicions.

Public confidence in the ruling Labour Party and the Order and Justice party has dropped but remains close to the 5-percent threshold needed for winning parliamentary mandates. If elections took place this Sunday, the Labor Party would be supported by 5.1 percent of the electorate (7 pct in July) and the Order and Justice party would secure 4.8 percent of the vote (5.5 pct in July), the poll showed. The two parties are closely followed by the Anti-corruption Coalition backed by 4.7 percent of respondents. Just like other coalitions, it has to get more than 7 percent of votes to place candidates in the Seimas.

The poll of 1,035 respondents was conducted by Vilmorus for Lietuvos Rytas on Sept. 2-10.