Incumbent Party Swings New Poll Numbers: Armenia’s Parliamentary Elections Take
EVN Report has released the second wave of its voter behavior survey conducted by the Armenian Election Study (ArmES), demonstrating persistent trends of general positivity by citizens on security and the direction of the country. Compared to the first wave, the polling results suggest a more favorable shift toward the incumbent party, while opposition parties remain fragmented with their respective vote distribution.
Similar to the first poll released on February 26, the second wave is also the first survey of its kind to be produced in Armenia, providing disaggregated data on non-committed voters, perhaps the most important voting bloc that will be determining the outcome of the June 7 Parliamentary elections. The overall results show Civil Contract, led by PM Pashinyan, dominates the electoral field in relation to the opposition, yet falls short of securing the necessary majority to form a single-party government. In this context, Civil Contract remains ahead of all of the opposition parties combined, but nonetheless will only receive the plurality of votes if the elections were held now. The opposition field is led by Narek Karapetyan’s Strong Armenia Party (which will be running as an alliance), whose performance has stagnated in the second wave, while Robert Kocharyan’s Armenia Alliance, the current opposition bloc in Parliament, fails to meet the threshold of entering Parliament. The electoral field also looks relatively abysmal for the pro-West opposition parties, with none coming close to meeting the threshold or demonstrating the performance potential of possibly entering Parliament and forming a coalition with Civil Contract.
The polling results indicate six important developments: 1) Prime Minister’s job approval not only improved compared to the first wave, but is actually in the positive range; 2) while larger number of respondents in the first wave did not think the country was headed in the right direction, results in the second wave demonstrate a robust vote of confidence on the direction of the country; 3) Strong Armenia remains the leading opposition party, while the Armenia Alliance demonstrated small improvements from the first wave, primarily eating up votes from the Prosperous Armenia Party; 4) majority of voters consider Armenia’s security environment to have improved, even amid the Iran War dominating the regional information space; 5) the visit of U.S. Vice-President J.D. Vance is viewed by the Armenian voter as generally positive, along with society’s positive marks on the TRIPP project, suggesting an electoral bump for the incumbent party; and 6) regardless of vote intention, similar to the first wave, a majority of Armenian voters think that Civil Contract will win majority and form a single-party government.
Methodology and Design
The methodological approach to this second wave of polling was primarily based on the American National Election Studies (ANES), specifically the ANES 2020 Time Series Study. Generally regarded as “the gold standard” of political behavior surveys in the industry, ANES is a pre- and post-electoral survey that is administered using a mixed-mode design (telephone and internet). In most aspects, ArmES sought to resemble 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 second wave of the pre-election survey commenced on February 23, 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. 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
(5) Citizen Forecasting
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 March 31, 2026, with a sample size of 911 respondents. At the 95% confidence level, the margin of error is 3.25%.
Results
In the first wave of EVN Report’s polling, 37.9% of respondents noted that the country was headed in the wrong direction, while 34.9% noted it was heading in the right direction, with 26.5% of voters being non-committed. The second wave demonstrates a significant improvement for the incumbent party, as 41.2% said the country was headed in the right direction, an improvement of 6%, while 33.3% said it was headed in the wrong direction. Three contextual factors may explain the shift in this response: 1) the political dividends accrued from the government after VP Vance’s visit; 2) the government’s handling of the Iran War; and 3) the government’s announcement of increasing pensions. Between international prestige, growing sense of security, and expanded social spending, there appears to be a positive public response to the trajectory of the country. In the broader scholarship on electoral behavior, the direction-of-the-country variable is a very strong indicator of the public’s overall perceptions of the incumbent government, suggesting a significant improvement for the current government compared to public perceptions of one month ago.
Similarly, the results demonstrated an increased approval of the Prime Minister, with a majority of 47.2% approving the Prime Minister’s job performance, while 35.8% disapproving, with 16.5% being uncertain. Compared to the first poll, where approval stood at 36% and disapproval at 45%, there appears to have been a 11% increase in the public’s support for the Prime Minister’s job performance.
Among non-committed, or so-called undecided voters, as displayed below, 35.5% approve the Prime Minister’s performance, while 31.2% disapprove, a small but noticeable improvement among non-committed voters from the first poll, where approval was 35.4% and disapproval at 33.5%. Thus, there is indication that non-committed voters have further shifted toward approving the Prime Minister’s job performance, as indicated by a 4% drop in disapproval numbers.
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 their expectations are one year from the present. On the retrospective question, 39.5% of respondents noted the economy was better now than it was a year ago, 23.6% said it had stayed the same, while 27.8% said it had gotten worse. Compared to the results of the first wave, the positive response on the economy increased by 7.5%, while the negative response decreased by 10%.
On the prospective question, 38% did not know what the state of Armenia’s economy will look like a year from now, while 40.4% said the economy will be better, and only 17.6% said the economy will get worse. In comparative terms, while the uncertain response increased by 10% from the first poll, the positive outlook increased by 6%, while the negative outlook decreased by 5.5%. Collectively, a positive trend on both the current and future state of the economy is observable in the results from the first to the second poll, with the second poll demonstrating far stronger results on the public’s perceptions on the economy.
Given the large percentage of non-committed respondents in our 2021 pre-election survey as well as in the first wave of this series, we anticipated a similar pattern for this wave. To address the problem of conceptualizing the non-committed electorate as a “black box,” where the uncertainty of which way such voters will tilt is deemed a mystery, we constructed a series of positional questions and employed respondents’ answers as a heuristic instrument to classify and predict their prospective vote choice. Positional questions are used in developing countries—particularly in the Afrobarometer—to deduce electoral behavior. In this wave, we asked questions to qualify citizen perceptions on justice and accountability, Armenia’s security situation, the TRIPP (Trump Road for International Peace and Prosperity) project, and the visit of the U.S. Vice-President Vance to Armenia. Respondents were presented two varying policy positions, with one position aligning with the incumbent government and the other with the opposition.
The first question item asked respondents to specify their position on the following questions: The current government has or has not undertaken sufficient work to hold previous government officials responsible for illicit activities?
55% of respondents said that the Pashinyan Government has not done a sufficient job holding officials of previous regimes accountable for corruption, abuse of power, or other such illicit activities. Only 19%, which is commensurate with the electoral landscape of the pro-Russia opposition, notes that enough has been done against officials of the previous governments. Contextually, 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 also remains quite strong with non-committed voters, as 54.4% believe that the current government has done an insufficient job of legally going after previous government officials, while 25.5% believe that the government’s approach has been sufficient, indicating that they do not support further prosecutorial actions against previous regime officials. Compared to the first wave of polling, support for more accountability against previous officials among non-committed voters increased by 3%, while support for ceasing prosecutorial activities decreased by 2%.
The second question item asked citizens 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? This question suggests more salience considering the current regional dynamics and the Iran War to Armenia’s south. A majority of respondents demonstrated positive perceptions on the state of the country’s security, viewing Armenia’s security environment to have improved when compared to the state of the country’s security landscape from a year ago. 52.4% of society agree that the country’s security situation has improved, while 40% do not. Compared to our first poll, the positive response increased by roughly 2%, while the negative response decreased by 1%. From an analytical perspective, even when considering the ongoing conflict between U.S.-Israel and Iran, and the fact that the war is taking place on Armenia’s southern border, the majority of the Armenian public still feels Armenia is a safer and more secure country when compared to 12 months ago.
When disaggregating the results of the security question among non-committed voters, the findings also demonstrate that the majority of so-called undecideds see collective improvement in the country’s security environment. 45.6% of non-committed voters hold the position that the security situation has improved, while 41.2% hold the position that the security environment has not improved. While the overall trend among non-committed voters demonstrates deeper approval of the current government’s handling of the security landscape, compared to our first poll however, non-committed voters appear to be a little more concerned: the positive response decreased by 5% (from 50.7% in the first poll), while the negative response increased by 4%.
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?
42.3% of respondents view TRIPP as being beneficial to Armenia, while 36.7% do not believe that TRIPP will bring stability and economic growth. The overall positive plurality of the response remains consistent with findings from the first wave of polling, with a slight overall increase of 1.8% in the negative responses. With respect to non-committed voters, as displayed below, the distribution of these numbers generally hold constant, as 38.2% of undecideds consider TRIPP to be beneficial for Armenia, while 31.4% do not. Collectively, TRIPP remains relatively popular, but results demonstrate that nearly a third of non-committed voters simply have not formed a position on the subject.
The fourth positional asked respondents what their assessment is of the U.S. Vice President Vance’s visit to Armenia, with three positional statements being framed as follows: Vice President Vance’s visit was positive for Armenia, Vance’s visit was negative for Armenia, and Vance’s visit was neutral for Armenia? A plurality of respondents, 37.4%, considered VP Vance’s visit as being positive for Armenia, while 31.7% found it to be neutral, and only 13.6% considered it negative. Contextually, the positive to negative ratio is quite robust, while the neutral responses indicate a more cautious approach, indicating, summatively, that not only did Armenian society have an overall positive assessment of Vance’s visit, but even in the domain of the negative vote, these numbers remain exponentially low.
Among non-committed voters, the Vance visit appears to have been a bit more nuanced, yet distributionally consistent: 35.5%, a plurality, considered it positive, while 28.6% deemed it neutral, and only 13.5% considered it negative. As such, the negative numbers remain quite low among the non-committed voters, but the more interesting observation is the increase in uncertain responses: the non-committed voters demonstrated a 5% increase from the general population.
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 89% of respondents noted their intention to vote in the upcoming elections (increase of 7% from first poll), which means that the produced results are modeled off of the premise of an 89% voter turnout. 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. Thus, the lower the turnout rate, the higher the electoral performance of the dominant party, and as such, a higher turnout rate in the model allows for a more cautious estimation of dominant party performance. As such, if the model was gauging voter turnout at 70%, the dominant party’s performance would be stronger, or at 50% (similar to the actual turnout of the 2021 Parliamentary elections), it would be even more stronger, so on and so forth.
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 33.6%, an increase of 7.5% from our previous poll, clearly indicating positive momentum for the incumbent party. Strong Armenia comes second with 11.4%, a minor decrease of only .5% from the previous poll, but a clear indication that their campaign has, at the moment, stagnated. The current parliamentary opposition, Armenia Alliance, which would need 8% as it is an alliance and not a single party to pass the threshold of entering Parliament, comes in third at 4.2%. While this is a minor increase of .7% for the Armenia Alliance from our first poll, they still remain far below the threshold of entering Parliament. Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP) ranks fourth with 3.3%, an observable decrease from the first wave of polling, while the Republic Party, led by Aram Sargsyan and generally aligned with Civil Contract, comes fifth at 2.7%. The Wings of Unity Party, led by former Human Rights Ombudsman Arman Tatoyan, self-styled as a pro-democracy alternative to the current government, comes in sixth with 2.3%. Collectively, none of the parties aside from Civil Contract and Strong Armenia Party meet the threshold of entering Parliament, especially the parties representing the pro-West factions. Similarly, the Armenia Alliance, which received 21% of the votes in the 2021 elections and dominated the opposition landscape, continues to lose votes to the Strong Armenia party, since the platform of the two parties remain very similar: ideologically pro-Russia and anti-Velvet Revolution. Collectively, the so-called anti-Pashinyan vote has consolidated mostly within Strong Armenia, while the Armenia Alliance and PAP seek to hold their existing bases of support. Collectively, the total vote share of the three parties reaches the 20% range, commensurate with the performance of Armenia Alliance in the 2021 elections. This confirms the trends observed in our first poll, as the distribution of votes clearly indicates that the anti-Pashinyan votes are being absorbed by Strong Armenia at the expense of the Armenia Alliance.
The most important result in the vote intention category, of course, are the 23.3% that responded “refuse to answer” and the 13.7% that responded “don’t know.” These two categories, collectively, make up the non-committed in the Armenian electorate, which stands at 37%. The distribution of these votes, as has become the norm in Armenian elections, will determine the outcome of the 2021 Parliamentary elections. By discerning the directional leaning of the non-committed/undecided voter, this survey, like the first wave, introduces insights and results on the likelihood of how non-committeds/undecideds will vote. This was 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. As compared to the first wave, we added another positional item to increase response variability. 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 both the first and the current poll provides evidence of this), then our additive index can provide predictability into their vote calculus.
The results demonstrate that 12% of non-committed voters are “most likely” to vote for Civil Contract, 20.2% are “more likely” to vote for the incumbent party, while 20.1% are “somewhat likely.” Thus, collectively, 52.3% of non-committed voters lean towards 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. Collectively, this is an increase from the 46.3% that was observed in the first poll. At the same time, 36.2% of non-committed voters are unlikely to vote for Civil Contract, while 11% are extremely unlikely.
The findings from the additive index allow for predictive vote intention modeling, as displayed above, demonstrating what the vote for Civil Contract will look like, at the 89% turnout rate, with 52.3% of non-committed voters likely to vote for the incumbent. 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 to 36.6%. 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 41.5%. With the entirety of the “likely” non-committed voters voting for Civil Contract, the party’s vote share increases to 50.3%. Important to note, however, is that the “somewhat likely” vote share, which makes up 20% of the undecided voter, is not a guaranteed vote for Civil Contract. As such, the 50.3% outcome, with an 89% voter turnout, at this stage, is a best case outcome for Civil Contract. Thus, statistically speaking, Civil Contract, currently, has a vote share of between 41.5% to 50.3%; meaning, if the elections were held now, and 89% of registered voters turned out to vote, they will approximately receive more than 41.5%, but not guaranteed, at this point, to secure 50.3% with certainty.
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.
