The leading conservative American pollster McLaughlin associates predicted a comfortable win for VMRO-DPMNE at the coming elections. Agency CEO John McLaughlin announced that he did polls, in cooperation with VMRO-DPMNE, which showed the party beating SDSM in all competitive races.

According to the agency, VMRO has the most convincing lead over SDSM in the 3rd and 4th district, which have little ethnic Albanian voters, who provide some level of support to SDSM in the other districts. In these two, eastern and south-eastern districts, VMRO beats SDSM by 39 to 32 percent (3rd district) and 38 to 33 percent (4th district – which includes Strumica, the only majority Macedonian area where Zaev hopes to have an even fight with VMRO).

In the central Skopje district, which SDSM won in 2016 and which used to be the main base of their Colored Revolution, things stand very differently now. The VMRO list lead by Gordana Siljanovska – Davkova leads SDSM and Nikola Dimitrov with 28 to 25 percent. DUI leads the Alliance ofAlbanians among the ethnic Albanian voters in this district with 6 percent to 4 percent of the vote. In the 2nd district, covering more working class parts of Skopje and Kumanovo, VMRO again leads SDSM 26 to 24 percent, and DUI leads AA with 9 to 7 percent.
The fifth district, which pits Igor Durlovski for VMRO against Radmila Sekerinska for SDSM, and where SDSM can expect some ethnic Albanian support, VMRO is again on top with 31 percent of the vote, to 28 for SDSM. DUI leads AA 5 to 4.

And finally, in the 6th, majority ethnic Albanian district, SDSM falls short of its stated goal of beating DUI and establishing itself as the winning party among ethnic Albanians (even though this win, if it happens, would be owing to the ethnic Macedonian SDSM supporters in the north-west). According to the McLaughlin poll, DUI wins the 6th district comfortably, with 26 percent of the vote, and SDSM can’t even match the Alliance. AA has 20 percent of the vote, while SDSM is in third place with 17 percent. VMRO would end up fourth in this district with 12 percent of the vote.

McLaughlin adds that there are many undecided voters in the poll, but that VMRO is in a clear lead. The agency was recently retained by US President Donald Trump to investigate the opposition polls in the US, which again, like in 2016, show Trump trailing to his challenger Joe Biden. It has worked with and advised a number of Republican politicians in the US, including Jeb Bush and Arnold Schwartzenegger, as well as conservative leaders such as Benjamin Netanyahu and Viktor Orban.

VMRO-DPMNE’s Timco Mucunski published the poll, along with John McLaughlin, saying that the leading Trump pollster announces a win for VMRO-DPMNE at the coming elections, driven by the hope for renewal and prosperity.