72, Park Street, Colombo 2, Sri Lanka
Tel: +94 11 231 4041/2/3/5 Fax: +94 11 231 4040
e-mail: info@ihp.lk web: www.ihp.lk twitter: @ihplk

PRESS RELEASEEMBARGOED UNTILFOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT

Date: 29 February 2024
Time: 11:59 PM Sri Lanka Time

Secretary/Administrator
Email: info ‘at’ ihp.lk

TO CONTACT LEAD INVESTIGATOR
Dr. Ravi Rannan-Eliya
Email: ravi ‘at’ ihp.lk Twitter: @ravirannaneliya

AK Dissanayake (50%) maintains lead inPresidential Election voting preferences inJanuary 2024
IHP MRP Presidential Election Voting Intentions UpdateJanuary 2024
IHP’s Sri Lanka Opinion Tracker Survey (SLOTS) MRP provisional estimates of Presidential
Election voting intent in January 2024 show NPP/JVP leader AK Dissanayake with the supportof 50% of all adults (-1 since previous month), followed by the SJB leader Sajith Premadasa
on 36% (+2), and both Pres. Ranil Wickremesinghe and a generic SLPP candidate on 7%.

Page 1 of 3

These estimates are based on the Jan. 2024 revision of the IHP SLOTS Multilevel Regressionand Poststratification (MRP) model, which smoothed monthly changes and reduced monthly
fluctuations due to sampling noise. This update is for all adults and is based on a revised MRP
model using data from 15,590 interviews conducted from Oct. 2021 to 26 February 2024, with506 interviews during Jan. 2024. 100 model iterations were run to capture model uncertainty.
Margins of error are assessed as 1–3% for January.
IHP’s SLOTS MRP methodology first estimates the relationship between a wide variety ofcharacteristics about respondents and their opinions – in this case, ‘If there was a
Presidential Election today, who would you vote for?’– in a multilevel statistical model. It thenuses a large data file that is calibrated to the national population to predict voting intent ineach month since Oct. 2021, according to what the multilevel model says about theirprobability of voting for various parties (‘post-stratification’) at each point in time. The
multilevel model was estimated 100 times to reflect underlying uncertainties in the modeland to obtain margins of error.

Related Reports
Institute for Health Policy, June 2023, “Pres. Ranil Wickremesinghe & SLPP continue to gainsupport in May. IHP Presidential Election Voting Intentions Update May 2023”.
Available at: https://ihp.lk/news/pres_doc/IHPPressRelease202306302.pdf
Institute for Health Policy, July 2023, “Little change in Presidential voting intention in June
2023: AKD 40%, Sajith 35%, Ranil 15%. IHP/SLOTS MRP Presidential Election Voting
Intention Update June 2023”.
Available at: https://ihp.lk/news/pres_doc/IHPPressRelease20230728.pdf
Institute for Health Policy, August 2023, “Pres. Ranil Wickremesinghe continues to gain
support in a potential Presidential poll. IHP/SLOTS MRP Presidential Election Voting
Intention Update July 2023”.
Available at: https://ihp.lk/news/pres_doc/IHPPressRelease20230822.pdf

Page 2 of 3

Institute for Health Policy, September 2023, “AK Dissanayake (38) and Sajith Premadasa(35) continue to lead in Presidential Election voting preferences. IHP/SLOTS MRPPresidential Election Voting Intention Update August 2023”.
Available at: https://ihp.lk/news/pres_doc/IHPPressRelease20230926.pdf
Institute for Health Policy, November 2023, “AK Dissanayake consolidates lead in
Presidential Election voting intent. IHP/SLOTS MRP Presidential Election Voting Intention
Update October 2023”.
Available at: https://ihp.lk/news/pres_doc/IHPPressRelease20231124.pdf
Institute for Health Policy, January 2024, “AK Dissanayake leads in Presidential Election
voting preferences on 50%, with Sajith Premadasa on 33% of all adults in December.
IHP/SLOTS MRP Presidential Election Voting Intention Update December 2023”.
Available at:https://www.ihp.lk/sites/default/files/press-release/IHPPressRelease20240130.pdf

About IHP
IHP is an independent, non-partisan research centre based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. TheSLOTS lead investigator is Dr Ravi Rannan-Eliya of IHP, who has trained in public opinion
polling at Harvard University and has conducted numerous surveys over three decades.

Methodology
SLOTS combines interviews from a national sample of adults (ages 18 and over) reached byrandom digit dialling of mobile numbers, and others coming from a national panel ofrespondents who were previously recruited through random selection. IHP estimates voting
intent using an adaptation of Multilevel Regression and Post-Stratification (MRP), with multiple
imputation to account for uncertainties in its modelling, exploiting data from all SLOTSinterviews to estimate voting in a particular month.
The January 2024 MRP estimates are based on 506 interviews conducted in January 2024,
and 15,590 interviews conducted overall from 1 October 2021–26 February 2024, with amargin of error assessed as 2.5–3.0% for AK Dissanayake, Sajith Premadasa and 0.5–1.5%
for Ranil Wickremesinghe and the other potential candidate. All estimates are adjusted toensure the sample matches the national population with respect to age, sex, ethnicity,socioeconomic status, education, geographical location, and voting in the 2019 Presidential
and 2020 General Elections.

Funding
The SLOTS survey has previously been funded by the Neelan Tiruchelvam Trust, the UK
National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), The Asia Foundation in Sri Lanka,and others. Current fieldwork is financed by the IHP Public Interest Research Fund and others.
The sponsors play no role in the study design, analysis, or interpretation of findings.
Furthermore, the survey findings do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of past andpresent funders. Interested parties can contact IHP for more detailed data and results.

Page 3 of 3