Croatian President beats 'No One' to become most popular politician

Zagreb  : Croatian President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic is the most popular politician in the country, media reports said on Sunday citing the latest regular poll on social and political preference in Croatia.

After five months when most people couldn't single out the most positive politician but instead chose "No One", the Croatian President is on the top with 19.2 per cent votes.

"No One" falls to the second place (18.7 per cent), while Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic stayed in the third place with 10.9 per cent votes, Xinhua news agency reported quoting N1 TV.

The Prime Minister is also on the list of "the most negative politicians" where he ranked on top with 21.1 per cent votes. The second place is shared by "all politicians" as a separate response category, while the third position is held by an opposition leader Davor Bernardic (9.5 per cent).

The ruling conservative party Croatian Democratic Union is still the most popular party in the country. If elections were held today, it would get 29.3 per cent votes, a little bit more than the 29 per cent polled in last month's survey.

Over the past year, the ruling party "lost" 4.7 percentage points of electoral support. Social-Democrats, the biggest opposition party in the country, has more support today than last month (21.1 per cent compared to 20.6 per cent in January), but compared to February 2017, it lost 1.2 percentage points. 

The biggest winner is Croatia's anti-establishment Living Wall party that has the support of 11.8 per cent, a rise of 5.8 percentage points in a year.

In this month's survey, 67.7 per cent of respondents believe that Croatia is "going in the wrong direction", compared to 67.3 per cent in January.