KIEV, June 17 – Vitaliy Klichko, the leader of the opposition Udar party, has been rapidly increasing in popularity and may have the best chance of beating President Viktor Yanukovych at the next presidential election, an opinion poll suggests.

Klichko led the group of likely presidential candidates with 16% popular support in May, followed by Yanukovych’s 14%, according to the poll released by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology.

This is the first time that Yanukovych’s rating has dropped to second place over the past three years, sending a major warning to the incumbent president that his policies lack popular support.

Leaders of three main opposition groups in Ukraine vowed earlier this year to nominate a single candidate to defeat Yanukovych at the next election due in March 2015.

“I am convinced that opposition groups by the fall of 2014 will be able to decide and nominate the single candidate to the presidency,” Klichko told Argumety i Fakty weekly newspaper.

Klichko’s rating has increased by 7 percentage points from 9% measured in June 2012, while Yanukovych’s has dropped by 3 points from 17%, underscoring a turnaround among voters over the past 12 months.

The latest poll is a setback for Arseniy Yatseniuk, the leader of the opposition Batkivshchyna party, who has been recently working hard to try to win nomination from the opposition groups as the single candidate.

Yatseniuk support dropped to 10% of respondents in May, down from 12% in June 2012, underscoring a problem of losing traction with voters ahead of the election.

Seeking to expand popular support, Batkivshchyna on Saturday merged with several smaller parties, including Yatseniuk’s Front for Changes, bolstering Yatseniuk. He will now de-facto lead Batkivshchyna until Yulia Tymoshenko, the jailed former prime minister and the founder of the party, is released from prison.

Tymoshenko was sentenced to seven years behind bars in October 2011 for abusing power during negotiations with Russia over natural gas supplies in January 2009, a charge she insists is politically motivated.

Other likely candidates trailed behind, including Oleh Tiahnybok, the leader of the nationalist Svoboda party, scoring 6%, up from 3% scored in June 2012, according to the poll.

Petro Symonenko, the leader of the Communist Party, would score 4%, down from 5% in June 2012, according to the poll.

Klichko has been gaining major popular support from central and western regions of Ukraine, while also boasting relatively large support in eastern and southern regions, according to the poll.

Support in the central regions, which usually represent swing voter regions in Ukraine, is crucial for any candidate seeking victory at the presidential election.

The poll was conducted by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology between May 21 and May 30 among 2,030 respondents throughout Ukraine. The margin of error is between 2.8% and 1.4%. (tl/ez)