Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and his Civil Contract party have increased their already substantial lead ahead of the upcoming Armenian parliamentary elections, according to a new poll released by the International Republican Institute (IRI) on Friday. Of those polled, 32% said they would vote for Civil Contract, with the distant second place choice being Russian-Armenian tycoon Samvel Karapetyan’s Strong Armenia Alliance at 6%.
The poll showed there is still considerable room for an upset, as 23% said they were undecided and another 21% refused to answer.
A previous IRI poll from March 2026 found that 24% of respondents said they would vote for Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party, with Karapetyan’s Strong Armenia coming in at 9%.
The election, set for 7 June, has been widely viewed as a pivotal contest and a referendum on Armenia’s geopolitical standing, with Pashinyan seeking to deepen ties to the West and Karapetyan and other opposition figures articulating a more pro-Russian course. It is also the first time that Pashinyan, originally elected following the 2018 Velvet Revolution, will face voters since the 2023 surrender of Nagorno-Karabakh and subsequent exodus of virtually the entire Armenian population.
Nonetheless, Pashinyan has much higher levels of trust compared to his primary opponents, Karapetyan, ex-President Robert Kocharyan, and eccentric tycoon Gagik Tsarukyan.
The poll found that 29% of voters trusted Pashinyan, with Karapetyan at 8%, Kocharyan at 4%, and Tsarukyan at just 3%. In total, however, voters remain wary of politicians in general, with 40% of respondents saying they trust no one.
Other signs indicate that voters still largely approve of Armenia’s trajectory — 61% of respondents said they believed the country is heading in the right direction.
While foreign policy and security are still crucial issues, ranking in first place (17%) in terms of voters’ views on the main problems Armenia faces, the economy was a close second, coming in at 15%. However, there were other security-linked issues voters mentioned as the main problem, such as ‘lack of peace’ at 12%, ‘wrong foreign policy’ at 6%, and ‘regional security’ at 4%.
The historic Washington meeting in August 2025 that brought together Pashinyan, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, and US President Donald Trump appears to have had a significant impact on reducing security-related fears — a poll taken in June 2025 found 44% of respondent said national security and border issues were the main problem Armenia faces.
Azerbaijan remains the country that a significant majority of Armenians (73%) view as the main threat to the country, followed by Turkey at 58%. But these figures have also dropped compared to polls from previous years — in March 2023, 93% of respondents said Azerbaijan was the main political threat, followed by Turkey at 89%.
Lucy Martirosyan
