Residents rate Matijošaitis highest among major-city mayors

Kaunas Mayor Visvaldas Matijošaitis received the strongest overall rating among the leaders of Lithuania’s three largest cities, according to an August poll reported by LRT.

Fifty-two percent of respondents rated Matijošaitis’s performance positively, 20 percent negatively and 28 percent said they had no opinion.

Vilnius Mayor Valdas Benkunskas was rated positively by 49 percent and negatively by 23 percent; 28 percent had no opinion. Klaipėda Mayor Arvydas Vaitkus had the lowest share of negative ratings, at 12 percent. Forty-six percent viewed his work positively, while 42 percent had no opinion.

Romas Mačiūnas, a sociologist at Baltijos tyrimai, said the survey included respondents from across Lithuania, so ratings reflected both mayors’ performance and how well known they were nationally. He said the large share of respondents without an opinion on Vaitkus could be linked to lower name recognition outside Klaipėda. The fact that other people in politics share his surname may also have affected the result, Mačiūnas said.

Across all Lithuanian municipalities, 67 percent of respondents rated their mayor’s work positively, 22 percent negatively and 11 percent had no opinion. Positive ratings were highest among residents of the largest cities, at 74 percent. They stood at 62 percent in other cities and in rural areas.

Managers and business owners were most likely to rate their mayors positively, at 77 percent, followed by students at 74 percent and professionals and clerical workers at 71 percent. Negative ratings were more common among residents of smaller cities, at 31 percent, and among unemployed people and homemakers, at 30 percent.

Baltijos tyrimai conducted the representative survey from August 20 to 31, interviewing 1,019 people aged 18 and over at 108 sampling points. The margin of error was no more than 3.1 percentage points.