Journalist Þóra Arnórsdóttir is the favorite candidate for the 2012 presidential election in Iceland, according to a survey conducted by the University of Iceland Institute of Social Sciences April 24-26 with 49 percent of respondents declaring support for her.
Þóra Arnórsdóttir announcing her candidacy. Source: Facebook.
The current president, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, follows suit with support ranking of 34.8 percent and the candidate who most recently joined the race, earth scientist Ari Trausti Guðmundsson, comes third with 11.5 percent of respondents intending to vote him, mbl.is reports.
Other candidates are way behind with three percent of respondents supporting lawyer Herdís Þorgeirsdóttir, 0.8 percent entrepreneur Ástþór Magnússon, 0.6 percent police officer Jón Lárusson, and 0.3 farmer Hannes Bjarnason.
The survey was sent to the institute’s online panel group of 1,961 persons, which is based on a random selection from the National Registry. The response ratio was 70 percent.
The same group of people was asked about their position on the presidential candidates on April 17 before Ari Trausti announced his candidacy.
It appears he has reached those who were undecided; 46 percent of those who say they will vote him now intended to hand in an empty ballot, were undecided or didn’t want to disclose their intention in the earlier poll.
When respondents were asked to name reasons for their choice of candidates (they could choose as many as three items out of a list of 15) most of them ticked off the candidate’s knowledge, experience and honesty.
Click here to read more about the candidates.
ESA
