KIEV, July 21. /TASS/. Five political parties are winning seats in Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada (national parliament) after Sunday’s snap elections, with the presidential party Servant of the People scoring the majority of votes by party tickets, according to exit polls that were made public immediately after the closure of polling stations.
According to various estimates, the Servant of the People is winning from 42.7 to 44.4% of votes. It is followed by the Opposition Platform For Life, which has from 11.5 to 12.5% of votes. Next are European Solidarity, a part of Ukraine’s former President Pyotr Poroshenko, with 8.5-8.9% of the vote, Yulia Timoshenko’s Batkivshchina with 7.7-8.5%, and singer Svyatoslav Vakarchuk’s Voice with 6-6.5% of votes.
Exit polls were conducted by the 112.UKrainia television channel, the TSN television channel. Kiev International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), Ilk Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Fund and Alexander Razumkov’s Ukrainian Center for Economic and Political Studies conducted a joint poll.
On Sunday, Ukrainians elected 225 lawmakers by party tickets and 199 more in one-seat constituencies. After Crimea reunified with Russia and because of the conflict in Donbass, the number of constituencies reduced by 26, to 424 instead of 450 envisaged by the constitution.
This was the last time that voting is taking place under a mixed majority-proportional system as a system based on open party tickets is expected to be introduced in the country before the next parliamentary election.
A total of 34 million Ukrainian citizens are included in the voter register. However, just like at the presidential election earlier this year, about three million people living in the areas of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions that Kiev doesn’t control did not have a chance to cast their ballots.
To win seats in the parliament, a party needs to enroll support of at least five percent of voters and candidates running for parliament in one-seat constituencies need to score the majority of votes in their constituency.