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Viral
A viral graphic with a graph claiming that former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s favourability among Sri Lankan citizens increased in April 2025.
The graphic has been edited. The original version of the survey was done by the Institute for Health Policy in August 2023, and not April 2025.
A TikTok post featuring an alleged infographic from a recent favourability study on Sri Lankan politicians Sajith Premadasa, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, Ranil Wickremesinghe, and Gotabaya Rajapaksa, is circulating widely on social media platforms.
The infographic claims to present the findings of the Sri Lanka Opinion Tracker Survey (SLOTS) conducted in April 2025 by the Institute for Health Policy (IHP).
The data shows that Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s favourability has increased while the favourability rates of the other politicians Sajith Premadasa, Ranil Wickremesinghe, and Anura Kumara Dissanayake, have decreased. The text overlaid on a photo of Gotabaya Rajapaksa in Sinhala says, “Thank you to all who have gathered around Gotabaya again. Survey results say that he is again number one.”
To verify this information, we first studied the graph closely, and a few things stood out. The TikTok was posted on April 27, 2025, claimed to show results of a monthly survey, despite the fact that April had not yet concluded. According to their official website, SLOTS results are released only after the month has concluded.
Furthermore, the text “April 2025” appears to have been tampered with, and the font used for ‘5’ differs from the rest of the text.
A closer look at the fine print of the graph shows the source of the data as “Sri Lanka Opinion Tracker Survey (as of 10 August 2023)”. A look at the SLOTS database for this period confirmed that the data presented was indeed from 2023. The full press release about the results can be found here.
A close comparison between the infographic seen on the TikTok post and the original from 2023 reveals they are identical in every detail except for the date, indicating that the viral infographic has been edited.
Hence we find that the viral infographic claiming to show a spike in the favourability factor of former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in the April 2025 SLOTS survey, is edited.
Our sources
‘Favourability of NPP/JVP leader AK Dissanayake sees significant drop in July 2023’, Press release by Institute of Health Policy Sri Lanka, published on August 16, 2023
Altered photo/video
Pramodha Weerasekera
October 9, 2024
Pramodha Weerasekera
September 25, 2024
Rifthi Ali
September 18, 2024
