CAIRO, Oct 23 (Aswat Masriya) - Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's approval rating dropped 14 per cent over the course of two months, according to a new poll conducted by the Egyptian Center for Public Opinion Research (Baseera).

Baseera’s poll shows that, while 82 per cent expressed their approval of the president’s performance around two months ago, only 68 per cent of the participants said they support Sisi in October, which marks his 28 months as a president.

Meanwhile, 24 per cent expressed their disapproval, while 8 per cent remained undecided about performance of Sisi, who won the presidential elections in a landslide victory in 2014, reaping over 96 percent of the valid votes.

The approval rating reached 82 per cent among those aged 50 years or more compared to 50 per cent among youth younger than 30 years.

Recent price hikes have highly influenced disapproval rates, according to Baseera. A total of 74 per cent of those who disapproved Sisi’s performance ascribed their opinion to increase in prices, compared to 53 per cent in August. 

A lot of Egyptians took to social media to express their frustration regarding the increase in prices of basic commodities over the past month, which was mainly caused by high inflation rate, hike in the US dollar exchange rate to the Egyptian pound and newly-introduced value-added tax. 

Other reasons of disapproval included unemployment, lack of improvement in the country’s conditions, deterioration of Egypt’s economic status and lack of social justice.

(Baseera)

Meanwhile, 19 per cent said their support for Sisi stemmed from the Suez Canal project, dropping from 32 per cent in the previous poll.

Other reasons for approval of Sisi included improved security, national reform, improvement of bridges and roads. Twenty-two per cent of the participants failed to give specific reasons behind their support of Sisi.

A total of 59 per cent of the respondents said they would re-elect Sisi as a president, while 20 per cent said they wouldn't vote for him. The decision of the remaining 21 per cent would depend on who are the rest of the candidates running for president. 

Egyptians who aged 50 or more have the highest tendency to elect Sisi if presidential elections were to be held tomorrow. Seventy-seven per cent of those who are willing to vote for Sisi again are aged 50 or above, compared to 44 per cent of those younger than 30 years. 

The poll was conducted using mobile phones and landlines on a nationwide sample of 1520 citizens aged 18 and older on October 17 and 18.