Opinion poll

With a week to go before national elections, the focus of party staffs is turning to the undecided voters whose number, according to the latest opinion polls, hovers around the not insubstantial 12 percent mark.

At election time we ask ourselves whether things today are better than they were four years ago. The answer is, by definition, subjective. But it is determined by many factors, from objective developments to each voter's desires and prejudices. That is why even when opinion polls are consistent, an election is never predictable.

The election bans have started on May 4 according to the election calendar for the Presidential and 28th Term Parliamentary Elections, which will be held on May 14. Accordingly, surveys, opinion polls, and forecasts will no longer be published.

This analysis will not begin with the famous quote from strategist James Carville in Bill Clinton's successful 1992 presidential campaign against incumbent George H.W. Bush.

If you're not a supporter of SYRIZA and are hoping for some surprises in the upcoming elections, please raise your hand high so we can all see it. For the past eight years, opinion polls have consistently shown Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the conservative prime minister, in the lead.

Voter approval ratings for Slovenia's centre-left government and the ruling party have been falling in recent weeks with the polls showing the proportion of opponents outstripping the share of supporters.

A poll run by Mediana for the newspaper Delo on 11 April showed the share of those perceiving the government's job as negative or very negative climb to 45%.

All opinion polls published since the rail tragedy at Tempe, on the last night of February, that left 57 dead and exposed the shoddiness of the country's rail infrastructure and operations, concur that the ruling conservative New Democracy party, although still in the lead, has lost significant ground.

With May general elections looming, political party staffs are doing their utmost to diagnose the unfolding political landscape in the aftermath of the deadly train collision in northern Greece on February 28.

The first polls recorded after the deadly train collision in northern Greece show that the ruling conservative New Democracy party recorded a significant drop in its approval rating - around 3 percentage points.

Public opinion plays a role in democracies. The extent to which polls influence the political decision-making process is a matter of dispute among experts. This applies to domestic politics, and also to foreign policy making. A majority of Greeks have a negative opinion of Germany. This is confirmed by several recent polls.