By Sri Lanka opposition leader Sajith Premadasa and President Ranil Wickremesinghe have gained ground in a voting intent poll for June 2024. Premadasa surpassed leftist candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayake by 13 points, while Wickremesinghe is now only 10 points behind.
The Institute for Health Policy (IHP) conducted the survey and found that support for Premadasa rose to 43% (+4), while Dissanayake’s support dropped to 30% (-6) compared to May. President Wickremesinghe’s support increased to 20% (+3), and a generic Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) candidate had 7% (-1).
However, IHP noted that the June estimates came with a substantial increase in model uncertainty, keeping the two leading candidates within the margin of error.
The estimates use IHP’s Sri Lanka Opinion Tracker Survey (SLOTS) Multilevel Regression and Poststratification (MRP) model (01/2024 revision). IHP stated on August 1 that the latest update includes data from 18,213 interviews conducted from October 2021 to July 21, 2024, with 446 interviews during June 2024.
“A hundred bootstraps were run to capture model uncertainty. Margins of error are assessed as 1–11% for June,” IHP explained, noting that higher margins of error reflect increased volatility in voter preferences, making the race between the two leading candidates very close.
IHP plans to expand its interview numbers in the coming weeks, hoping the next MRP update will provide more clarity on current trends.
The SLOTS MRP methodology estimates the relationship between respondents’ characteristics and their voting intent using a multilevel statistical model. This model smooths month-to-month changes and predicts voting intent based on national population data. The multilevel model was estimated 100 times to capture underlying uncertainties and obtain margins of error. As more data were collected, voting intent results for previous months have been updated, remaining within the margin of error.
