A new poll confirmed the lead of opposition leader, former prime minister and head of Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party Yulia Tymoshenko in the presidential race with 20% support from those that intend to vote, and that President Petro Poroshenko is in third place with 11%.

The result is important as another recent poll by BAML found that Poroshenko and Tymoshenko were neck-and-neck with 17% each. Tim Ash, senior sovereign strategist at BlueBay Asset Management said of the pollster: “No one I talked to in Kyiv as ever heard of them.” Concorde Capital warned at the end of last year that some candidates – and named Poroshenko specifically – may try and plant fake poll results improving their standing to muddy the waters.

“We believe it’s possible that the Poroshenko campaign is paying for polls to skew the questions and results against Tymoshenko. The polls conducted by the Kucheriv Fund/Razumkov centre, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology and the International Republican Institute are considered to be most reliable,” Zenon Zawada of Concorde Capital said in a note in September.

The Institute for Analysis and Forecasting was not named as one of the three most trustworthy pollsters but its results are very close to the results of other polls and reconfirm the previous pecking order.

"According to the latest survey, 20.2% of the voters among those who have chosen the sides and intend to take part in the election, would be ready to support Timoshenko if the elections were held next Sunday," said the head of Institute for Analysis and Forecasting Yuri Lesnichy as cited by Tass.

However, support for her among all voters is 14.1%, he said. 

Showman Vladimir Zelensky comes second with 12.6% of voters that have picked sides (8.8% of all voters) ready to back him. The head of the Opposition Platform — For Life, Yuriy Boyko (aka Boiko), and incumbent Poroshenko are ranked third and fourth with 11.9% (8.3%). The leader of the Civic Position Party, Anatoly Grysenko, winds up the list of five contenders for the post with 10.7% (7.5%) supporting him.

About 78% of the polled Ukrainians are ready to go to the polling stations on March 31, Lesnichy noted. "Forty-five percent will take part in the voting for certain, and 33% are likely to vote," he added.

Ukraine’s presidential elections are scheduled for March 31. If none of the candidates secures the support of more than half of the voters casting their ballots, the runoff election will be held on April 21.

So far the Central Election Commission (CEC) has registered 13 candidates as of January 24, reports the Kyiv Post, with five names added in the last week. Over 35 people have expressed an interest in running.

The Kyiv Post reports the latest additions as:

• Gennadiy Balashov, a businessman running the minor Party 5.10 whose main agenda is a radical simplification of taxes and which won 0.4% in the parliamentary election in 2014;

• Olga Bogomolets, a lawmaker and the owner of a private medical clinic, who came eighth in the 2014 election with 1.9% of the vote;

• Yuriy Boyko, a lawmaker and former energy minister in the government of runaway former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych;

• Roman Nasirov, the former head of the Fiscal Service and currently a defendant in a major corruption case;

• Oleksandr Shevchenko, the director of Bukovel ski resort, representing Ukrop, a party backed by the resort’s owner, oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky.

Tymoshenko has already registered but Poroshenko has yet to formally put his name forward.