The press release was prepared by Anton Hrushetskyi, executive director of KIIS

During December 4-10, 2023, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) conducted an all-Ukrainian public opinion survey "Omnibus", which included questions about the attitude to the creation of the Government of National Unity. Bythemethodofcomputer-assistedtelephoneinterviews(CATI) based on a random sample of mobile phone numbers (with random generation of phone numbers and subsequent statistical weighting), 1,200 respondents living in all regions of Ukraine (except the Autonomous Republic of Crimea) were interviewed. The survey was conducted with adult (aged 18 and older) citizens of Ukraine who, at the time of the survey, lived on the territory of Ukraine (within the boundaries controlled by the Ukrainian authorities until February 24, 2022). The sample did not include residents of territories that were not temporarily controlled by the authorities of Ukraine until February 24, 2022 (AR of Crimea, the city of Sevastopol, certain districts of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts), and the survey was not conducted with citizens abroad.

Formally, under normal circumstances, the statistical error of such a sample (with a probability of 0.95 and taking into account the design effect of 1.1) did not exceed 3.2% for indicators close to 50%, 2.7% for indicators close to 25%, 2.1% - for indicators close to 10%, 1.4% - for indicators close to 5%.

Under conditions of war, in addition to the specified formal error, a certain systematic deviation is added. KIIS previously cited factors that can affect the quality of results in "wartime" conditions.

In general, we believe that the obtained results are still highly representative for the population of Ukraine living in the territory under the control of the Government, and allow a fairly reliable analysis of the public moods of the population.

In Ukraine, from time to time there are calls for the creation of a Government of national unity from the majority of factions in the parliament (following the example of Israel). We asked the respondents a relevant question, how do they feel about the creation of such a Government from the parties "Sluha Narodu", "YeS", "Batkivshyna" and "Holos".

As can be seen in the graph below, 37% of Ukrainians have a positive attitude towards such an initiative, 38% have a neutral attitude towards it, and 19% have a negative attitude towards it. The remaining 7% were undecided.

Graph 1. In Israel, after the attack by Hamas and the beginning of the war in Gaza, a government of national unity was formed, which included representatives of all political forces represented in the Israeli parliament (Knesset). How do you feel about the creation of the same Government in Ukraine, to which the parties represented in the parliament delegate their representatives ("Sluha Narodu", "Yevropeiska Solidarnist", "Batkivshchyna" and "Holos")?

In all regions, the attitude towards the creation of the Government of national unity is quite similar.

Graph2. Attitude to the creation of the Government of national unity in the regional dimension

Respondents were also asked in an open format who they would like to see at the head of such a Government. The majority of respondents (76%) could not answer the question.

Respondents who were able to answer the question named 71 different surnames. The table below shows the main answers. P. Poroshenko, V. Zaluzhnyi and Yu. Tymoshenko were relatively often mentioned.

Table 1. If a Government of national unity was formed, who do you think could take the position of Prime Minister? (open question for all respondents, respondents were given options)

A. Hrushetskyi, comments on the survey results:

Against the background of public demand for unity, the idea of a government of national unity seems quite appropriate (another question is viability, especially when for the authorities it will be a decrease in control, and for the opposition - the need to criticize less). However, now we see that the positive attitude only rather prevails (compared to the share of those who have a negative attitude), that is, we can rather talk about a restrained positive perception of such an initiative.

Perhaps it was influenced by the fact that in the formulation of the question we listed the main factions in the parliament that can form part of the Government of national unity. As we can see from other data, Ukrainians have a rather critical attitude towards all the four listed parties (for example, in a survey for NDI in May 2023, no more than a third had a positive attitude towards parties-potential members of the Government of national unity[1]). That is, part of the respondents are restrained or have a negative attitude at the expense of such a composition, which they do not trust very much. Presumably, if we were asking about a simple unification of various social, public, political and volunteer forces, then such an idea would receive more approval.

Annex 1. Formulation of questions from the questionnaire

In Israel, after the attack by Hamas and the beginning of the war in Gaza, a Government of national unity was formed, which included representatives of all political forces represented in the Israeli parliament (Knesset). How do you feel about the creation of the same Government in Ukraine, to which the parties represented in the parliament delegate their representatives ("Sluha Narodu", "Yevropeiska Solidarnist", "Batkivshchyna" and "Holos")?

If a Government of national unity was formed, who do you think could take the position of Prime Minister? OPEN QUESTION. WRITE THE RESPONDENT'S ANSWER LITERALLY