Azerbaijani citizens express confidence in Ilham Aliyev, survey shows
By Aynur Karimova
Azerbaijani citizens have again expressed great confidence in President Ilham Aliyev as evidenced by the results of a nationwide poll conducted by the Rey Monitoring Center on April 18-19, 2016.
Judging by the results of the poll, if presidential election were held in Azerbaijan next Sunday, the overwhelming majority - 92.8 percent of respondents of respondents would vote for the incumbent President Ilham Aliyev.
These are the results of a social survey conducted among 800 respondents by the Rey monitoring center in Baku on April.
Some 97 percent of respondents trust President Aliyev. Nearly 89 percent of respondents think that the president expresses the interests of people.
Moreover, the survey showed that about 78.8 percent of the respondents see no alternative to President Aliyev.
The analysis of the survey results shows that such a high rating and the level of confidence in the president is the result of the general success of the foreign policy, economic development measures, the military success of the national army, etc.
Thus, the survey showed that the majority of respondents support President Aliyev's foreign policy. Some 87.3 percent of respondents assessed the president's foreign policy as very good and on the whole good.
The respondents were given the following question: which of the recent events in the country's foreign policy can be called a success? They had an opportunity to choose more than one answer.
As many as 65.5 percent of the respondents said that Ilham Aliyev's visit to Washington at Barack Obama's invitation to take part in the 4th Nuclear Security Summit is a successful event in the country's foreign policy.
Almost the same number of respondents - 63.8 percent - say that the most successful event in the last months in the visit of President Aliyev to Ankara. This is while the vast majority of the respondents believe that this visit is a sign of support to Turkey and personally to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who had to twice cancel his visit to Baku due to the terrorist attacks in Turkey.
Moreover, 38 percent of the respondents say that one of the successful steps taken in Azerbaijan's foreign policy is the visit of President Aliyev to Iran, while 19 percent believe that the meeting of Azerbaijani, Russian and Iranian foreign ministers in Baku can be considered a successful event.
Against the background of the recent escalation of the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh, the support to Ilham Aliyev as the commander-in-chief of the armed forces has also increased: the level of confidence in the commander-in-chief is 97 percent.
The steps taken by Azerbaijan's president and government in the economic sphere also get positive feedbacks from Baku residents.
The results of this opinion poll are shining examples of the successful domestic and foreign policies pursued by Ilham Aliyev, the successor of founder of the modern Azerbaijan, National Leader Heydar Aliyev.
Ilham Aliyev, 55, has been elected the President of Azerbaijan for three times since 2003.
The Azerbaijani people put their faith in their elected leader Ilham Aliyev as the head of state for three times, in 2003, 2008 and 2013.
In all presidential elections, an overwhelming majority of voters (76 percent in 2003, 88 percent in 2008, and 84.54 percent in 2013) voted for President Aliyev.
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Aynur Karimova is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter @Aynur_Karimova
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