DND Monitoring Team
Region-wise results of Ukraine Presidential Election 2019 indicate that traditional division of Eastern and Western regions still stand intact; although part of eastern region and Crimea is no more within Ukraine.
Boyko Yuri Anatolyovych, who got fourth position in the election, out-rightly defeated all of his competitors in eastern Lugansk, Donetsk and got second in several by bagging 11.68 percent votes of total polled votes. He bagged 2,184,778 votes and he lost the third position in the election with just 2 percent margin which went in favour of the former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko who got 13.39 percent (2,477,998) votes.
Boyko Yuri Anatolyovych got a straight victory in Lugansk and Donetsk and got second position in Kharkivska, Odesa, Zaporizka, Mykolaivska, Kherson, Dnipropetrovsk and third in Sumska regions.
Yulia Tymoshenko played very well in Ivano-Frankivsk, Chernivetska Chernigivska, Ternopilska, Kirovograd and Vinnitska regions.
The sitting President Poroshenko had an edge over his competitors in Lviv, Metropolitan Kyiv, Ternopilska, Rivnenska, Vinnitska and Volinska regions while he got the second position in Ivano-Frankivsk region. Interestingly, the land of national Hero Stepan Bandera — Ivano-Frankivsk stood with Yulia and Poroshenko who got first and second positions in the region.
TV star Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelensky will have to work hard in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ternopil and Lviv regions to break edge of Poroshenko over him in the runoff election. He will also have to tailor strategy to win the support of Boyko Yuri Anatolyovych to get Yuri’s vote bank of the Eastern region.
April 21 runoff election will be scientific, calculated and pure number game and possible collaborations among foes and friends to achieve threshold of 51 percent votes. Though the United States and Russia apparently stood away (not very far away) from March 31 Ukraine election but forthcoming weeks will show where things would go and who will support whom to secure the number game in runoff elections.
A veteran political scientist from Kyiv Olexiy Haran while commenting on situation said that:
“The results show there is no traditional East-West divide (it was in 2004 and 2010, but not in 2014 any more). It is not correct to say that “half of eastern region is not with Ukraine”, only 1/3 of Donbas are not controlled by Ukraine which together with Crimea is not more than 5% of the territory”.
