In the latest Sri Lanka Opinion Tracker Survey (SLOTS) polling in April 2023, support amongst likely voters for the NPP/JVP fell 8 points to 32% but it maintained an edge over the SJB whose support remained unchanged at 30%. Support seems to have gone to the UNP, which gained 3 points to 9%, and other smaller parties who increased their share by 3 points to 14%. This latest polling confirms a recovery since February in support for the UNP, but mostly at the expense of the NPP/JVP and not the SJB.

The SJB continued to have an edge over the NPP/JVP in voter enthusiasm, with this reducing the NPP/JVP lead by 3% in likely voters compared with all voters. 

The trends seen since late 2022 continue to indicate that most floating voters are ex-SLPP voters, who continue to swing between the NPP/JVP and UNP.

Dr Rannan-Eliya, SLOTS lead investigator and IHP Executive Director, commented that the April polling confirms that the UNP has likely benefited from the recent IMF agreement, but largely at the expense of the NPP/JVP. 

He also commented that the stability of SJB support over the past year suggests it has a core support of loyal voters who account for one in four of the electorate, but that the SJB seems to be finding it difficult to expand its support beyond that.

About IHP

IHP is an independent, non-partisan research centre based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The SLOTS lead investigator is Dr Ravi Rannan-Eliya of IHP, who has trained in public opinion polling at Harvard University and has conducted numerous surveys over three decades. 

Methodology

SLOTS combines interviews from a national sample of adults (ages 18 and over) reached by random digit dialling of mobile numbers, and others coming from a national panel of respondents who were previously recruited through random selection. IHP estimates voting intent using an adaptation of Multilevel Regression and Post-Stratification (MRP), with multiple imputation to account for uncertainties in its modelling, exploiting data from all SLOTS interviews to estimate voting in a particular month. 

The April 2023 MRP estimates are based on 580 interviews conducted in April 2023, and 11,368 interviews conducted overall from 31 August 2021–19 May 2023, with a margin of error assessed as 4–5% for the NPP/JVP, SJB, UNP and SLFP, and 1–3% for the other parties. As the April update uses a more recent data set than the previous update, there are small changes in estimates of voting shares for previous months. Additionally, the number of stochastic simulations used in the modelling was increased from 30 to 100, yielding a small improvement in the precision of estimates of voting shares and of margins of error.

MRP is a method that is increasingly used by polling firms in other countries to leverage small samples, most notably by YouGov which used it to forecast results of the UK Brexit Referendum and recent UK general elections. All estimates are adjusted to ensure the sample matches the national population with respect to age, sex, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, education, geographical location, and voting in the 2019 Presidential and 2020 General Elections.

Funding

The SLOTS has been funded by the Neelan Tiruchelvam Trust, the UK National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), The Asia Foundation in Sri Lanka, and others, but the sponsors play no role in the study design, analysis, or interpretation of findings. Interested parties can contact IHP for more detailed data and results.