March 9 (SeeNews) - Centre-left opposition Social Democratic Party (SDP) remains favourite to win Croatia's 2020 general election and has strengthened its lead ahead of governing centre-right Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), according to the results of an opinion poll.
If elections were held now, SDP would win 29.3% of the vote (up from February's 28.9%), while HDZ would come second with 26.7% support (just down from February's 26.8%), a survey conducted during March 3-6 among 1,300 people by Promocija Plus agency for public broadcaster RTL Hrvatska showed on Sunday.
The survey has a margin of error of plus/minus 2.77%.
Third is the recently unveiled political formation of musician Miroslav Skoro - Homeland Movement (Domovinski Pokret), that has the support of 11.5% of those polled, up from 9.4% in February.
March is the third month in a row in which SDP has come ahead of HDZ in opinion polls.
In January, the SDP outran HDZ for the first time since HDZ came to power four years ago, after SDP candidate Zoran Milanovic won Croatia's presidential election, defeating incumbent president Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic backed by HDZ in a January 5 runoff vote.
In the first round of the presidential elections, musician Skoro came third, following which he decided to set up his own party for running in thegeneral elections, due to take place in the autumn.
In the March survey, fourth came the liberal Bridge of Independent Lists (Most), who backed Skoro in the presidential vote. Support for it dropped to 4.8% in the March poll from February's 5.1%.
The Croatian Peasant Party, HSS, which is going to participate in the elections together with SDP, came next with 2.3% support (unchanged from February). It was followed by the independent alliance around former judge Mislav Kolakusic, NLMK, whose popularity continued to drop, falling to 2.0% in March from February's 2.5%.
According to the survey, president Milanovic topped the most positive politician ranking for a third month in a row in March. His popularity rose to 19.4% from February's 18.8%, while prime minister and HDZ leader Andrej Plenkovic remained second with 16.9%, up from February's 15.5%.
Miroslav Skoro followed with 7.3% (down from February's 4.8%).