Seven out of ten Ukrainians say they are ready to vote in the presidential election in March 2019, according to a poll by sociological group Rating on behalf of the International Republican Institute, Ukrinform.net reports.

Asked "Do you plan to vote in the presidential election scheduled for March 2019?” 43% of respondents answered "rather yes", while 34% of citizens said they would vote “definitely.” Another 12% of respondents will “definitely” not participate in the upcoming election and 6% said they would “rather not” participate. The last 5% of respondents were undecided.

Most of those that said they will definitely vote live in western Ukraine (41%), while the least live in eastern Ukraine (28%), which is the scene of most of the military operations.

In general more older citizens have already made up their mind to vote, compared to the younger generations: 40% of respondents aged 51 years and older say they will definitely participate in the presidential election, while only 28% of Ukrainians aged 18-35 say they will definitely go to the polling stations.

The poll was conducted throughout the entire territory of Ukraine (except for the occupied territories of Crimea and Donbas) from September 29 to October 14, 2018. A total of 2,400 Ukrainians aged 18 years and older were polled. The margin of error does not exceed 2%.

According to the latest polls the front runner is opposition leader, former prime minister and head of Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party Yulia Tymoshenko with an approval rating of 21%.

In a separate poll Ukrainians consider hostilities in Donbas, corruption and low levels of production to be the biggest problems for the state, according to another poll conducted by Rating.

Over half of the respondents (57%) said that military operations in Donbas are the most important problem for Ukraine, 49% named corruption, and a quarter (26%) of those polled think that the low level of production is the biggest problem for the country. Tellingly only 8% of Ukrainians consider the Russian presence in Crimea to be a problem for Ukraine.

The government has been introducing bans on Russian language books and a quota system for Ukrainian language programming on TV, but only 5% of respondents said the language issue is a problem. Other issues the respondents considered to be unimportant include land ownership rights, lack or probability of cutting natural gas, electricity, water supply, ecology and a delay in the payment of salaries and pensions.

Who will you vote for in the March 2019 presidential election?
Yulia Tymoshenko	Batkivshchyna	21%
Vladimir Zelensky	independent	11%
Petro Poroshenko	Bloc Poroshenko	10%
Anatoly Gritsenko	Civil Position Party	10%
Yuri Boyko	Opposition Block	9%
Oleh Lyashko	Radical Party	8%
Svyatoslav Vakarchuk	independent	6%
Evgeny Murayev	Ours	5%
Source: Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), the Razumkov Center and Rating