Ruling party, United National Movement (UNM), increased its lead over Bidzina Ivanishvili-led Georgian Dream coalition since June at the expense of drop in latter’s support to 12% among likely voters, according to August poll commissioned by the U.S. National Democratic Institute (NDI).

Large portion of likely voters (43%), according to this poll, either did not know or refused to answer whom they would vote.

• August Political Ratings – pdf

37% of likely voters said they would vote for UNM if the parliamentary elections were held tomorrow, almost the same as in NDI’s June poll.

Georgian Dream suffered 6-percentage point drop since June, when its support stood at 18%.

22% were undecided in August, the same as it was in February and June.

But there was an increase from 16% in June to 21% in August of those likely voters who refused to answer.

3% said they would vote for none of the political parties.

Like in June, Christian-Democratic Movement (CDM) again had 3% in the August poll.

The survey was fielded by the Caucasus Resource Research Centers (CRRC) for NDI on July 31-August 12 and was funded by Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida).

The survey was conducted through nationwide face-to-face interview with 2,038 respondents; it has a margin of error plus, minus 3%.

77% of respondents said they would likely vote if election were held tomorrow, a 26-percentage-point increase from September, 2011 and 13-percentage-point increase from February, 2012.

Favorability

The poll also includes a survey on how voters respond on a question whether they ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ specific political figure.

Among key political figures in this segment of survey, there are notable changes over the June poll in respect of PM Vano Merabishvili and Georgian Dream leader Bidzina Ivanishvili.

Merabishvili, who became Prime Minister in early July, has improved his standing in this part of the survey with 62% of respondents saying they ‘like’ him, up from 55% in June, when he was the interior minister. President Saakashvili’s favorability rating was 61%.

Ivanishvili’s favorability suffered 7-percentage-point decline with 39% of respondents saying they ‘like’ him, according to the August poll.