As the election day draws closer, and new corruption scandals are revealed daily, the ruling SDSM party is setting all its hopes on the expected opening of EU accession talks. The socialists hope it will boost their chances at the polls and will remove one of the main objections the citizens have – that they made humiliating national concession on the name issue without securing the EU accession talks in return.

But pollster Vladimir Bozinovski warns that, even if the European Union agrees to reverse the veto from October 2019 and allows Macedonia to open the talks, it might not lead to a serious bump in the polls for SDSM.

The EU accession talks date was already built in the expectations, and actually it’s over-built, if you remember the infamous plane photo from 2018 when it was declared a done deal. Not receiving the accession talks date would not have caused a major movement in the polls, but the EU prospect was used to cover up all the defeats since then, including the Racket scandal. By now, whether we get the date or not, probably won’t move the voters much. They are by now largely set and have decided who to vote for, Bozinovski told Alfa TV.

He said that there is a group of voters that could amount to 50 to 100 thousand people who are undetermined but might still decide to vote. Bozinovski is not certain receiving an approval to open the much awaited accession talks is a big enough draw to get them to vote in favor of SDSM.