Extremist party AUR loses 3.5 points in one month after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. INSCOP poll shows the PSD and the USR stagnating and the PNL rising

The extremist party AUR lost 3.5 points in one month after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to an INSCOP poll conducted between the 2nd and 7th of March. It is the first time since the 2020 parliamentary elections that AUR has reversed its upward trend in the polls and dropped in the voting options, amid the start of the war and the near-total disappearance of the pandemic topic from public opinion.

It should be noted that AUR leaders have had weak reactions in condemning Russia, and some of them have had a wave of actions, statements, and positions promoting violent anti-Western positions and the Russian narrative in Romania.

What is the voting intention for the parliamentary parties, in relation to the pool of respondents who expressed a voting option (72.8% of the total sample):

– PSD leads in the voting intention with 32% (slightly down from 32.7% in February).

– PNL climbs to second place with 19.9% (up from 16.6% in February).

– AUR drops to third place with 18.9% (down from 22.4% in February)

– USR stagnates, with 10.8% of the vote (10.3% in February).

Thus, the PSD and the USR maintain their previous electoral scores before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The slight increase of PNL could be attributed to the recent intense activity of the President and the Prime Minister who are gaining points on the back of very high visibility in association with credibility benchmarks such as NATO and the EU, says Remus Ștefureac, director of INSCOP.

„The slight decline of AUR can be explained by the disappearance of the party from the public spotlight, coupled with accusations that have been made by the media and political opponents of pro-Russian attitudes of some members or people associated with this party. We don’t know at this point whether the effects of the war in Ukraine on voting intentions are temporary, due to the emotional context, or whether they will deepen,” said Ștefureac.

The Inscop poll was conducted in partnership with Verifield. The data has been collected through telephone interviews between 2-7 March 2022 on a sample of 1077 respondents. The maximum allowable error is +/-3%.

Translated from Romanian