evidence: Support for Ranil Wickremesinghe has been rising from March through August 2024, while there have been small declines in support for AK Dissanayake, Sajith Premadasa, and SLPP during the same period. IHP Executive Director, Dr Ravi Rannan-Eliya, commenting on the narrow race, said: "Our August polling indicates a tightening race in which no candidate will get close to half the vote on the first count. While this indicates that no candidate has succeeded in exciting a majority of voters, it also means that it is increasingly likely that the 2024 election will be the first presidential poll decided on a count of second and third preferences. We urge civil society and the Elections Commission to intensify efforts to educate voters about using their preferences to ensure that every vote counts." [...] Both AK Dissanayake and Ranil Wickremesinghe drew a large part of their support from Gotabaya Rajapaksa 2019 voters, with only one in eight of these voters backing Sajith Premadasa.