Support for President Ranil Wickremesinghe Surges in Presidential Election Voting Intent
Photo courtesy of Daily Mirror
The Institute for Health Policy’s (IHP) Sri Lanka Opinion Tracker Survey (SLOTS) MRP provisional estimates of presidential election voting intent for July 2024 show NPP/JVP leader A.K. Dissanayake and SJB leader Sajith Premadasa leading neck and neck (37% and 36% each within the margin of error) but with both at less than 40% of all adults.
July also saw a continuing surge for President Ranil Wickremesinghe, whose support grew to 23%. Support for a generic SLPP candidate remained unchanged at 4% with Namal Rajapaksa only declaring as a candidate in August.
Analysis of the June-July estimates indicate some differences in who is supporting each candidate. Support for AKD was strongest in the youth, a majority of whom supported him (54%), as well as among Sinhala voters (41%) and the most affluent third of voters (42%). In contrast, Sajith Premadasa led among the poorest third of voters (42%) and among minorities (51% in Sri Lankan Tamils and 65% in Muslims).
President Wickremesinghe’s support increased with age, reaching 38% in those aged 60 years and older and he obtained more support amongst women (26%) than in men (17%). Otherwise, his support was mostly evenly distributed across other demographics.
SLOTS polling director, Dr Ravi Rannan-Eliya, noted that: “AKD’s strength is due not only to support amongst the young, but also to winning the biggest share of disaffected Gotabaya voters. President Wickremesinghe’s initial strength has also been due to support from that same group since he was only picking up one in five of voters who supported Sajith Premadasa in 2019.”
These estimates use the IHP SLOTS Multilevel Regression and Poststratification (MRP) model (01/2024 revision). This update is for all adults and uses data from 19,015 interviews conducted from October 2021 to 19 August 2024, including 701 interviews during July 2024 and 497 interview in August.
IHP’s SLOTS MRP methodology first estimates the relationship between a wide variety of characteristics about respondents and their opinions, in this case, “If there was a Presidential Election today, who would you vote for?” in a multilevel statistical model that also smooths month to month changes. It then uses a large data file calibrated to the national population to predict voting intent in each month since October 2021, based on what the multilevel model indicates about their probability of voting for various parties (‘post-stratification’) at each point in time.
SLOTS combines interviews from a national sample of adults (ages 18 and over) reached by random digit dialling of mobile numbers, and others coming from a national panel of respondents who were previously recruited through random selection.
The July 2024 MRP estimates are based on 19,015 interviews conducted from 1 October 1, 2021- August 19, 2024, including 701 interviews conducted in July 2024. All estimates are adjusted to ensure the sample matches the national population with respect to age, sex, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, education, geographical location and voting in the 2019 presidential and 2020 general elections.
