Ukraine's incumbent President Viktor Yanukovych and Vitali Klitschko, leader of the UDAR party, have the most chances of making it to the second round of presidential elections, shows a study entitled "Ukrainian Residents' Evaluation of the Socio-Political Situation in the Country as of January 2014."

The study was conducted by the Sociopolis Social Technologies Institute for the Situations Modeling Agency on January 16-30, 2014. It surveyed 1,650 respondents (permanent residents of Ukraine) in more than eighty populated areas in all regions of Ukraine.

The study, whose results were presented by Oleksiy Holobutsky, deputy director of the Situations Modeling Agency, at a press conference in Interfax-Ukraine, shows that 18.4% of the respondents are ready to support Yanukovych and 17.6% are ready to support Klitschko in the presidential elections.

The current situation is very different from the previous presidential elections, Holobutsky said.

"Yanukovych has the highest rating of all presidents in the last years of their terms and he remains a popular politician," the expert said.

Sociologists believe Klitschko has kept his rating high by successful positioning.

"Klitschko's tendency to speak in vague terms remains his strong point," Holobutsky said.

The third most popular presidential candidate after Yanukovych and Klitschko is parliamentarian Petro Poroshenko (9.5% of the respondents said they would vote for him).

Holobutsky believes Poroshenko's rating went up due to the fall of the rating of Arseniy Yatseniuk, leader of the Batkivschyna parliamentary faction. The expert also said Poroshenko's ratings may fall as quickly as it rose because the situation in the country is changing rapidly.

The level of support of other potential presidential candidates (Yatseniuk, Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko, Oleg Tiahnybok, leader of the Svoboda association, parliamentarian Anatoliy Hrytsenko, parliamentarian Oleh Liashko, ex-president Viktor Yuschenko, parliamentarian Inna Bohoslovska, acting social policies minister Natalia Korolevska, and Viktor Medvedchuk, leader of the Ukrainian Choice public movement) is currently much lower than the level of support of the three most popular presidential candidates.