Vucic would win more votes than Nikolic - poll

Vucic would win more votes than Nikolic - poll

According to the polling agency's director of public opinion surveys Marko Uljarevic, Nikolic "could then have big problems" in the runoff.

According to the poll, about 3.5 million voters would cast their ballots.

The poll did not include SPS leader Ivica Dacic as a presidential candidate, "because it is taken that the ruling coalition would have only one candidate."

Uljarevic said that if Nikolic is the candidate and goes to the second round, Vuk Jeremic would be his "most serious opponent" after winning 20 percent in the first round, followed by Vojislav Seselj (16 percent) "and maybe Sasa Jankovic (9 percent)."

"Beside these four candidates, in case there are fewer opposition candidates, Nenad Canak could have a surprisingly good result with as many as eight percent," he said.

If Nikolic and Jeremic go to the second round, the key would be the votes cast for Seselj in the first round.

"It is unknown what message Seselj would send to his voters and to what extent they would listen to him," stresses Uljarevic.

If, however, Vucic becomes the candidate, Jeremic would win only 14 percent of the votes cast by decided voters in the first round, followed by Seselj (11 percent) and Jankovic (7 percent).

If early parliamentary elections are held together with the presidential, the SNS alone could count on the rating that it and the pre-election coalition gathered around the party had in April 2016 - 48 percent, while together with the coalition this number would go just over 50 percent.

The SPS would win about 9 percent of the votes if it ran alone, followed by the SRS (8 percent), the DJB (6 percent), the DS (5 percent), the Dveri Movement (5 percent), and the LDP and the LSV with 3 percent each.

The survey was conducted December 7-8 and included a representative sample of 1,137 adult Serbian citizens.