KABUL, Afghanistan | President Hamid Karzai holds a strong lead in the Afghan presidential race but is still short of the majority he needs for a first-round victory, according to a poll released Friday with less than a week to go before the balloting.
The poll, funded by the Washington-based International Republican Institute (IRI), suggests turnout will be crucial, especially in the Pashtun south - the president’s support base where Taliban fighters have been warning voters to stay away from the polls.
A week before the vote, there are fears that election tension could boil over into street violence if presidential losers allege massive fraud. Opposition candidates have been accusing Mr. Karzai and his team of using state resources to ensure re-election. Local and international monitors are convinced there will be voter irregularities.
According to the IRI poll, Mr. Karzai remains the leading candidate in a crowded field of three dozen contenders with about 44 percent support, a rise of 13 percentage points from a poll conducted in May.
Mr. Karzai’s main challenger, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, trailed at 26 percent - a dramatic increase over the 7 percent he received in the May poll.
If no candidate wins over 50 percent of the vote, the top two finishers will face a runoff in early October. That could lead to a coalition uniting around a single candidate to try to defeat Mr. Karzai.
The poll, based on face-to-face interviews with 2,400 people between July 16 and 26, had a margin of error of 2 percentage points. IRI is a nongovernmental group that receives money from USAID, the U.S. government aid arm.
Mr. Karzai, meanwhile, took his campaign Friday to the western city of Herat, where he won the public endorsement of Energy Minister Ismail Khan, the political czar of the region.
Mr. Karzai told a crowd of several thousand that if re-elected, his first priority would be to initiate talks with the Taliban and other insurgent groups.
About 90 percent of the respondents in the latest poll said they planned to vote, despite Taliban threats to disrupt the balloting. Election authorities have said about 10 percent of nearly 7,000 polling centers will likely remain shut, most of them because of bad security.
The threat is the greatest in the south and east, where the country’s ethnic Pashtuns live. Mr. Karzai, a Pashtun, could see his totals lowered if insurgent violence keeps Afghans there from voting.
In an effort to encourage voting, village elders in the south are trying to broker election-day cease-fire agreements with Taliban commanders, according to Mr. Karzai’s brother, Ahmad Wali Karzai.
However, a Taliban spokesman denied any talks were under way.
“Don’t listen to those liars. There is no truth to any talk of a cease-fire. People should not go to vote. The Taliban has no agreement with the government,” Taliban spokesman Qari Yusuf Ahmedi told the Associated Press by telephone.
In the southern province of Helmand, U.S. Marines have been trying to secure the strategic town of Dahaneh to cut Taliban supply lines and enable the government to open a polling station there.
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