the number of seats won was not a majority, and efforts to form a majority coalition with other opposition parties failed. Since then, Yushchenko has remained the leader and public face of the Our Ukraine parliamentary faction. In 2001, both Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko broached at creating a broad opposition bloc against the incumbent President Leonid Kuchma in order to win the Ukrainian presidential election 2004. In late 2002 Yushchenko, Oleksandr Moroz (Socialist Party of Ukraine), Petro Symonenko (Communist Party of Ukraine) and Yulia Tymoshenko (Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc) issued a joint statement concerning "the beginning of a state revolution in Ukraine". Though the communists stepped out of the alliance and though Symonenko opposed having one single candidate from the alliance in the 2004 presidential election, the other three parties remained allies until July 2006. On 2 July 2004, Our Ukraine and the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc established the Force of the people, a coalition which aimed to stop "the destructive process that has, as a result of the incumbent authorities, become a characteristic for Ukraine", at the time President Kuchma and Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych were the incumbent authorities in Ukraine. The pact included a promise by Yushchenko to nominate Tymoshenko as Prime Minister if he won the October 2004 presidential election. Yushchenko was widely regarded as the moderate political leader of the anti-Kuchma opposition, since other opposition parties were less influential and had fewer seats in parliament. Since becoming President of Ukraine in 2005, he has been an honorary leader of the Our Ukraine party. From 2001 to 2004, his rankings in popularity polls were higher than those of President Leonid Kuchma. In later public opinion polls, though, his support plummeted from a high of 52% following his election in 2004 to below 4%. However, in the parliamentary elections of March 2006, the Our Ukraine party, led by Prime Minister Yuriy Yekhanurov, received less than 14% of the national vote, taking third place behind the Party of Regions and the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc. In a poll by the Sofia Social Research Centre between 27 July and 7 August 2007 more than 52% of those polled said they distrusted Yushchenko while 48% said they trusted him. Presidential election of 2004 In 2004, as President Kuchma's term came to an end, Yushchenko announced his candidacy for president as an independent. His major rival was Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. Since his term as