Incumbent Improves, Opposition Fragments: Armenia’s Parliamentary Elections Take
The third wave of EVN Report’s voter behavior survey on the 2026 Parliamentary elections, conducted by the Armenian Election Study (ArmES), has been released, displaying continuity in the general trend patterns of voter preferences on security, economy, and the direction of the country, with a notable increase in the job approval of the prime minister. When observing response patterns from the first wave and second wave of polling, this third wave demonstrates three important trends: 1) the Prime Minister’s job approval has methodically increased from 36% in the first poll, to 47.2% in the second poll, and 49% in the current results; 2) disapproval of his job performance, on the other hand, has declined from 45% in first poll, to 35.8% in second poll, and 33.7% in the current poll; 3) public perceptions on the direction of the country have also strongly shifted, 38% saying country was headed in wrong direction (35% noting right direction) in the first poll, to 41.2% saying it is headed in the right direction (33.3% noting wrong direction) in second poll, and 44% in the current poll stating country is headed in the right direction (30.9% noting wrong direction).
The distribution for vote intention remains remarkably consistent throughout the three surveys, with Civil Contract enjoying a broad lead over the remaining opposition parties, while still falling short of securing the necessary majority to form a single-party government. At the same time, the fragmentation of the leading opposition forces creates a threshold problem for the Armenia Alliance and Prosperous Armenia Party, as neither reach the necessary threshold to enter parliament, while Strong Armenia remains the only opposition force that crosses the necessary electoral threshold. The remaining opposition parties, primarily defined by pro-West or third-way policies, demonstrate marginal electoral performance far below the minimal threshold.
As displayed in the first two polls conducted by ArmES for EVN Report, the third wave is also the first survey of its kind utilized in Armenia, as it provides disaggregated data on non-committed or so-called undecided voters, which consistently make up 35% to 40% of the Armenian electorate. Collectively, the results of this third wave demonstrate five important developments: 1) public perceptions on the economy have significantly improved, as observed in the polling period from December of 2025 to May 2; 2) Armenian society has also demonstrated a continuously positive assessment of the country’s security environment, as a consistent majority note that Armenia’s security has improved in the last year; 3) large numbers of respondents approve of the Pashinyan Government’s handling of the Iran War, indicating growing public support for Armenia’s foreign policy orientation; 4) public perceptions on the TRIPP project have observably eroded, and while more view TRIPP beneficial than not, that margin has exponentially decreased from the first poll to the current one; and 5) support for Strong Armenia has been incrementally decreasing, while support for the Armenia Alliance, while within the margin of error, has been sequentially stagnant.
Methodology and Design
The methodological design to the third wave of polling was structurally based on the American National Election Studies (ANES), specifically the ANES 2020 Time Series Study. Collectively regarded as “the gold standard” of political behavior surveys in the industry, ANES is a pre- and post-electoral survey that utilizes a mixed-mode design, which includes both telephone and internet-based surveys. In most aspects, ArmES’ methodological approach resembles its American counterpart. Both ArmES and ANES rely on a combination of panel and fresh sample design, and both are nationally representative. Minor differences include: (1) the use of mixed-mode by ANES and telephone mode by ArmES, and (2) a pre- and post-electoral aspect by ANES, while ArmES is strictly pre-electoral.
The third wave of the pre-election survey commenced on April 1, 2026. The telephone survey relied on a random digit dialing technique and sampled respondents in accordance with the population size and regional distribution of registered voters as provided by Armenia’s Central Electoral Commission. The design and development of each question was theoretically grounded to understand the electoral preferences of the Armenian voter through a sociological and socio-psychological lens. The survey consisted of the following sections:
(1) Direction of the Country and Positional Issues
(2) Partisanship
(3) Election & Candidate Evaluation
(4) Sociodemographic & Socioeconomic Indicators
Respondents were asked a total of 23 questions with 14 questions related to the upcoming elections. The survey also asked questions related to the respondent’s socioeconomic and sociodemographic characteristics. The survey concluded on May 2, 2026, with a sample size of 925 respondents. At the 95% confidence level, the margin of error is 3%.
Results
The survey asked respondents if the country is headed in the right direction or the wrong direction, an important question used in voter behavior polling that offers a more accurate observation of the public pulse. 44% of the respondents said Armenia is headed in the right direction, while 30.9% said it is not, with 24.7% not providing a position. This is a 3% increase in the positive response from the second wave and a 2.4% decrease in the negative response, demonstrating a net 5.4% improvement in public perceptions of the country’s trajectory.
The question on the job approval of the Prime Minister also demonstrated a positive trajectory for the incumbent party, as 49% approved of Nikol Pashinyan’s job performance, while 33.7% disapproved, indicating a near-majority approval and a 2% increase from the previous poll. Interestingly, the “somewhat approve” remains constant from the second poll, but the “strongly approve” number is where the 2.6% increase is observed. Similarly, a 1% drop in “strongly disapprove” and 1% drop in “somewhat disapprove” is observed from the second poll to the current one, suggesting a consistent, yet gradual pattern of growing public approval.
Among non-committed, or so-called undecided voters, as displayed below, 41% approve of the Prime Minister’s performance, a 5.5% increase from the second poll, while 31.5% disapprove, similar to the second poll. The disaggregated data indicates that the Prime Minister has made important improvements among undecided voters, as his disapproval has remained constant, while his approval numbers have significantly improved.
Public perceptions on the state of the economy remain one of the stronger indicators of electoral performance, and to better understand this dynamic, the survey asked two specific questions on the national economy, one retrospective and one prospective. The retrospective question asked respondents how do they qualify the current state of the economy when compared to the previous year, while the prospective question asked what do they think the state of the economy will look like one year from the present. On the retrospective question, 41.7% of respondents stated the economy was better now than it was a year ago, an increase of 2.2% from the previous poll. 21.6% noted it had stayed the same (a 2% decrease from previous poll), while 28.5% said it had gotten worse, an increase of 0.7%. An observable pattern appears to be the small shift from voters who had said that the economy was the same in the previous poll to now saying the economy has improved.
With respect to the prospective question, 40.1% said the economy will be better (very similar to the 40.4% response from the previous poll), while only 11.6% said the economy will get worse (consistent with previous polling). Contextually, public perceptions of the current and future state of the economy remain quite positive, ceter paribus, which demonstrates an alignment both with positive trends on the direction-of-the-country question as well as the job approval numbers for the Prime Minister.
Considering the large percentage of non-committed respondents that have been the norm in all surveys conducted in Armenia after the 2020 War, including our 2021 pre-election survey as well as in the first and second waves of this series, along with other prominent polling outlets such as IRI, we clearly anticipated a similar pattern for this wave. To address this fundamental problem in polling, and to decipher the problem of conceptualizing the non-committed electorate, ArmES constructed a series of positional questions, designed as proxies, and employed respondents’ answers as a heuristic instrument to classify and predict their prospective vote choice. Positional questions are used in developing countries and broad-ranging regional survey projects (such as Afrobarometer and Arab Barometer) to deduce electoral behavior. In this survey, we asked questions to qualify respondent perceptions on justice and accountability, Armenia’s security situation, the TRIPP (Trump Road for International Peace and Prosperity) project, and the Government’s handling of the Iran-U.S./Israel War. Respondents were presented two varying policy positions, with one position aligning the response with the incumbent government and the other with the opposition.
The first positional question asked respondents to specify their stance on the following questions: The current government has or has not undertaken sufficient work to hold previous government officials responsible for illicit activities?
55.1% of respondents said that the Pashinyan Government has not done a sufficient job holding officials of previous regimes accountable for abuse of power, corruption, or other such illicit activities. On the other hand, 23.9%, which roughly aligns with the electoral landscape of the pro-Russia opposition, notes that enough has been done against officials of the previous governments. As such, in the domain of justice and accountability, the results of this positional question strongly indicates that there is broad public support for more comprehensive prosecutorial actions by the government to hold previous regime officials accountable.
The demand for justice and accountability among non-committed voters, as displayed below, also remains quite strong, as 48.2% believe that the current government has done an insufficient job of legally going after previous government officials, while 21.3% believe that the government’s approach has been sufficient. Compared to the second wave of polling, support for more accountability against previous officials among non-committed voters has decreased by 6.3%, while support for ceasing prosecutorial activities has also decreased by 4.2%.
The second positional question asked respondents to disclose one of two positions on the following question: Has the security situation in Armenia improved or not improved when compared to one year ago? A significant majority responded that Armenia’s security situation has improved, indicating a growing positive perception to the state of the country’s security landscape when compared to a year ago. 53.8% of society agree that the country’s security situation has improved (increase of 1.4% from previous poll), while 35.9% do not think there has been an improvement (a decrease of 4.1% from previous poll). From an analytical perspective, while the positive increase in response may be within the margin of error, the decrease in the negative response is quite telling: less people have a negative perception of Armenia’s security landscape.
The positive marks for the security environment also hold strong with non-committed voters, as the disaggregating results demonstrate that plurality of so-called undecideds see collective improvement in the country’s security environment. 48.2% of non-committed voters hold the position that the security situation has improved, while 38.6% hold the position that the security environment has not improved. The overall trend among non-committed voters demonstrates deeper approval of the current government’s handling of the security landscape, and when compared to our second poll, we observe a 2.6% increase in the positive response, while a 2.6% decrease in the negative response, a collective 5.2% shift among non-committed voters in their approval of the government’s handling of the security environment.
The third positional question asked respondents what their opinion is of TRIPP, with the two positional statements being framed as follows: TRIPP is beneficial to Armenia because it will bring economic growth and stability or TRIPP is not beneficial to Armenia because it will not bring economic growth or stability?
36.2% of respondents view TRIPP as being beneficial to Armenia, while 36.3% do not believe that TRIPP will bring stability and economic growth. 25.5% remained undecided or non-committed. While the overall positive plurality of the response suggests that by a slight margin more Armenian’s view TRIPP as good for the country, the pattern from the previous two polls suggests a growing sense of public scepticism on the topic. In the second poll, for example, 42.3% viewed TRIPP as beneficial, while 36.7% did not. In the current results, the positive perception of TRIPP has declined by almost 4%, while the negative response has stayed the same. The more interesting finding is the increase in undecided responses: whereas in the second poll 21.1% were undecided, in the current poll, this number went up by 4.4%, strongly correlating with the decrease in the positive response. Thus, Armenian society has not become more negative on TRIPP, since the negative response has remained constant, but it has become more uncertain, as the positive response has declined at almost the same rate as the increase in the undecided response.
With respect to non-committed voters, as displayed above, the changing perceptions on TRIPP become empirically evident: undecided voters have developed significant scepticism towards the TRIPP project. When compared to the previous poll, 38.7% viewed TRIPP beneficial, demonstrating a 12% decrease among undecided voters within the current results. Further, the negative perception on TRIPP has also increased from the second poll, going from 31.4% to 36.5%, an increase of 5%. The 17% turnaround among non-committed voters on TRIPP, along with the increase in uncertain responses, is clear indication that the government is losing support among undecided voters on this project. Thus, while TRIPP remains collectively more popular and then unpopular among the general populace, it is robustly underwater with non-committed voters.
The fourth positional question asked respondents what their assessment is of the Pashinyan Government’s adopted policy of dealing with the war in Iran? As displayed below, 42.8% of respondents approved of the Government’s adopted policy, while 20.9% did not, indicating broad public support for how the Armenian Government has handled the geopolitical flareup.
The disaggregated data of the non-committed respondents also demonstrates support for the Government’s foreign policy on the conflict, with 35.4% approving and 16.2% disapproving. But the more telling result with non-committed voters on this question is the high rate of “don’t know” or “refuse to answer” results, collectively making up 46.5% of the responses. This is much higher than all of the other such responses to the previous three positional questions, which indicates two things: while issues of justice, security, and TRIPP are well known to most citizens, even if such citizens do not follow politics actively, the Iran conflict and Armenia’s response remains too nuanced of a topic for large chunks of non-committed voters.
To gauge both voter turnout and vote intention, respondents were asked whether they will be voting in the June 7 Parliamentary elections, and if so, which party or alliance would they vote for. Approximately 85% of respondents noted their intention to vote in the upcoming elections (a decrease of 3.7% from previous poll), which means that the produced results are modeled off of the premise of an 85% voter turnout. As is the norm in polling, and with our previous two surveys, this is expected and remains consistent with much of the voting behavior scholarship analyzing the “turnout gap” that exists between self-reported turnout in surveys and actual turnout data. As such, respondent’s intent in voting and actual voter turnout usually differ by a margin of 10% to 30%. For our purposes, the higher turnout percentile in the model allows for a more rigorous and conservative estimate of front-runner or dominant party results.
With respect to vote intention, the first set of results, without including the directional leaning of non-committed voters, shows plurality dominance by Civil Contract at 32.5%, a marginal decrease of 1% from our previous poll. The decrease, while within the margin of error, appears to be correlated with the increase of non-committed voters in this third wave when compared to the second wave: from 37 to 39.5%. The increase in non-committed voters is expected as campaign season picks up and political polarization increases, thus driving up the number of undecided respondents. The percentile shift is also noted within the opposition parties. Strong Armenia, headed by Narek Karapetyan as proxy for Russian-Armenian tycoon Samvel Karapetyan, comes second with 10.1%, a decrease of 1.3% from the previous poll. The Armenia Alliance, led by former-president Robert Kocharyan, which would need 8% to meet the electoral threshold since it is running an alliance and not a single party, comes in third at 4.4%, while Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP) ranks fourth with 3.4%. Both Armenia Alliance and PAP did not demonstrate improvements from the second poll, while Strong Armenia underwent a slight decline. Collectively, the electoral field appears to be consolidating, with the opposition parties becoming stagnant and consistently performing, collectively, within the 20% threshold, while Civil Contract also demonstrating a stabilization of its numbers commensurate with its base.
Collectively, none of the parties aside from Civil Contract and Strong Armenia meet the threshold of entering Parliament, especially the parties representing the pro-West factions, such as the Republic Party of Aram Sargsyan or Rally for the Republic of Arman Babajanyan, or the “third-way” parties such as the Wings of Unity led by Arman Tatoyan or New Force led by Hayk Marutyan. Similarly, the Armenia Alliance, which received 21% of the votes in the 2021 elections and dominated the opposition landscape, has not been able to make up the votes that it has bled to the Strong Armenia Party, and nor has it been able to expand into the domain of the non-committed voter. Since Armenia’s Constitution stipulates a minimum of three factions entering Parliament, even if the Armenia Alliance does not meet the 8% threshold, by virtue of being in third place, it will automatically enter Parliament. At the same time, however, if Prosperous Armenia is able to reach the 4% threshold, then it will actually go ahead of the Armenia Alliance and thus be the third party entering Parliament, with the Armenia Alliance being left out.
Polling results that cannot account for undecided voters, especially in electoral landscapes such as Armenia’s, only offer a partial and incomplete picture of projective electoral outcomes. This is especially acute when considering the fact that nearly 40% of respondents qualify as non-committed. As such, the most important result in the vote intention category becomes the 25.4% that responded “refuse to answer” and the 14.1% that responded “don’t know.” These two categories, collectively, make up the non-committed in the Armenian electorate, which stands at 39.5%. The distribution of these votes, as has become the norm in Armenian elections, will determine the outcome of the 2026 Parliamentary elections. By discerning the directional leaning of the non-committed/undecided voter, this survey, like the previous two waves, introduces insights and results on the likelihood of how non-committeds/undecideds will vote.
This projective outcome is produced through our application of an empirically-grounded technique called additive index modeling. This approach is common in voting behavior studies, particularly among scholars who seek to analyze the political sophistication of the electorate. In our case, we created a 0-4 additive scale based on responses to the four positional items to denote the proximity of the respondent’s policy positions to the Prime Minister. A score of 4 indicates the highest level of issue proximity, while a score of 0 indicates the lowest. If we posit that the Armenian electorate is gradually casting their ballot based on issues (results from the first two surveys as well as the current poll provide evidence of this), then our additive index can provide predictability into their vote calculus.
The results of the additive index model demonstrate that 8.1% of non-committed voters are “most likely” to vote for Civil Contract, 12.6% are “more likely” to vote for the incumbent party, while 26.4% are “somewhat likely.” Thus, collectively, 47.1% of non-committed voters lean toward the incumbent party. The directional likelihood of this category of non-committed voters voting for the current government remains statistically significant, and as such, robust. At the same time, 36.3% of non-committed voters are “somewhat unlikely” to vote for Civil Contract, while 16.5% are extremely unlikely.
As displayed below, the findings from the additive index translate to a predictive vote intention model, which shows what the vote for the incumbent party will look like, at the 85% turnout rate, 47.1% of non-committed voters likely voting for Civil Contract.
With a conservative estimate of only the “most likely” non-committed voters intending to vote for Civil Contract, the incumbent party’s vote share increases from the base vote intention of 32.5% to 35.7%. With the total number of “most likely” and “more likely” non-committed voters intending to vote for Civil Contract, the incumbent party’s vote share increases to 40.7%. With the entirety of the “likely” non-committed voters voting for Civil Contract, the party’s vote share increases to 51.1%. Important to note, however, is that the “somewhat likely” vote share, which makes up 26.4% of the undecided voter, while leaning toward Civil Contract, is not a guaranteed vote for Civil Contract. As such, the 51.1% outcome, with an 85% voter turnout, in this model, is a best case outcome for Civil Contract. Thus, statistically speaking, Civil Contract, currently, has a vote share of between 40.7% to 51.1%; meaning, if the elections were held now, and 85% of registered voters turned out to vote, they receive more than 40.7%, but are not guaranteed, at this point, to secure 51.1% with certainty.
Correction: An earlier version said that the third wave of the pre-election survey commenced on March 1, 2026, when it, in fact, commenced on April 1, 2026.
About ArmES
ArmES was launched prior to the 2017 Armenian Parliamentary Elections as a mechanism for the scientific inquiry of the Armenian Electorate. Distinguishing itself from other polls and surveys, the framework of ArmES rests on voting behavior scholarship. Each question asked is grounded in empirical evidence. The study’s questionnaire is constructed around the socio-psychological model (SPM) that posits vote intention as a factor of sociological and psychological indicators. Subsequent waves – in 2018 and 2021 – carried a similar methodological approach towards analyzing the Armenian voter prior to the 2018 and 2021 parliamentary elections.
About the authors
Dr. Rafael Oganesyan
Dr. Rafael Oganesyan is the program manager at the Office of Undergraduate Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. His research portfolio includes voter behavior, economics and elections, and post-Soviet politics. Rafael is also the director of the Armenian Election Study (2017, 2018, 2021), a pre-electoral survey of the Armenian electorate. His work has appeared in various academic journals, including French Politics, Journal of Common Market Studies (JCMS), and Journal of Elections, Public Opinion, and Parties.
Dr. Nerses Kopalyan
Dr. Nerses Kopalyan is an Associate Professor-in-Residence of Political Science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. His fields of specialization include international security, geopolitics, political theory, and philosophy of science. He has conducted extensive research on polarity, superpower relations, and security studies. He is the author of “World Political Systems After Polarity” (Routledge, 2017), the co-author of “Sex, Power, and Politics” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), and co-author of “Latinos in Nevada: A Political, Social, and Economic Profile” (2021, Nevada University Press). His current research and academic publication concentrate on geopolitical and great power relations within Eurasia, with specific emphasis on democratic breakthroughs within authoritarian orbits. He has conducted extensive field work in Armenia on the country’s security architecture and its democratization process. He has authored several policy papers for the Government of Armenia and served as voluntary advisor to various state institutions. Dr. Kopalyan is also a regular contributor to EVN Report.
