Pollster: AK Party will get 45.6 pct in 2015 election

Following the first-ever direct presidential election on Aug. 10, eyes turned to the national election that will be held in 2015. A research institution, Andy-Ar, conducted the first survey regarding the upcoming election contacting nearly 2,000 citizens in 31 cities.

The first survey for the national election implied that the AK Party, which is expected to run the national election without President-elect Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for the first time since its establishment, would receive 45.6 percent of the vote. The main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), which has been dealing with its presidential election defeat and is heading to an extraordinary congress to elect a chairman in the coming days, would receive 24.3 percent of the vote. The Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) would receive 16.8 percent of the vote according to the survey. The survey predicted that the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP) would receive 9 percent of the vote in the 2015 election.

In the 2011 national elections, the AK Party garnered 49.9 percent of the vote while the CHP received 25.9 percent and the MHP received 12.9 percent. Among all of the surveys conducted ahead of the presidential election, Andy-Ar is the polling company that had the closest prediction to the election result.

According to Andy-Ar's prediction, Erdoğan was anticipated to get 53 percent and be elected president in the first round, while İhsanoğlu and Demirtaş were predicted to receive 37.9 percent and 9.1 percent respectively.

In the Aug. 10 elections, Erdoğan received 51.8 percent of the vote while CHP and MHP joint presidential candidate Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, who is the former secretary-general of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, received 38.4 percent of the vote. HDP candidate Selahattin Demirtaş, who is a popular political figure among Kurdish citizens, received 9.8 percent of the vote.