Ukraine decides: Part Six

The dust has settled on the first round of voting in the Ukrainian presidential elections. Andrew Wilson tries to make sense of the results

The dust settles on the first round of voting

Now that I’m back in the UK, its time to
reflect on the final results, which have to be made official by Friday
.Campaigning for the second round can then begin – it’s one of the quirks of
Ukrainian law that posters have to come down and politicians stay off TV till
then (though prime ministers still tend to be on). The voters could do with a
rest. The final results have Viktor Yanukovych on 35.3% and Yuliya Tymoshenko on 25%, with Serhiy Tihipko (note the spelling, which I will explain later) on 13.1%, with turnout of 66.8%. (I’ve put a table of the full results at the end of this piece.)

First a word about the vote for the top two.

Tymoshenko. With the orange vote split and turnout down 8% on the first round
in 2004, Tymoshenko scored four million less votes than Yushchenko at this
stage five years ago. Her optimistic reading, however, is that the total ‘national-democratic’
vote is around 60%, and that she suffered from having a second round strategy
in round one. That is, she was already trying to cross regional divides, which
cost her votes in the west. But she didn’t advance in the east (except for Crimea), where her vote was down on her party vote in
2007. Tihipko was number two in most places in the east and south. Moreover, Tymoshenko
has few really high scores: only one is over 50% (Volyn with 53.8%).
Significantly, her campaign for round two is supposed to kick off with a big
rally in Lviv. She still thinks she has to shore up the core vote – and bitter
attacks on Yanukovych as the ‘anti-state’ candidate seem inevitable.

Yanukovych
won a big
base score and one first place in the west (Transcarpathia). There is plenty of
evidence of ‘diffusion’, i.e. of respectable votes for the minority candidate in
most regions of Ukraine (26.7%
for Yanukovych in Kirovohrad, etc) – Ukraine is certainly less polarised
than in 2004. But Yanukovych’s team only has a ‘first round-lite’ strategy for
round two. They don’t want to do anything novel to appeal to voters in the
west, as they would risk losing their base in the east, both for this election
and for possible early parliamentary elections.

But the 40% who voted for the other candidates will obviously be key.
There are three ways of looking at how their vote might split.

1. Voter
Camps, and why the spelling of Tihipko may matter

Tymoshenko is right. The definitively
‘orange’ candidates outnumber the ‘blue’ ones. The main other orange candidates
are Yushchenko, probably Yatsenyuk, Tyahnybok, Hrytsenko and Kostenko, who
together have 15.3%.

Yanukovych only has three significant
‘other blues’: Symonenko, Bohoslovska and Moroz, who have a much smaller 4.4%
of the vote between them.

The key independents are Lytvyn, who will
sell himself to the highest bidder; possibly Yatsenyuk and obviously the
biggest winner of the vote so far Serhiy Tihipko.
One important piece of news is that he has settled on a Russian-leaning
spelling of his name – with an ‘h’ in the middle, but with two ‘i’s. His
political intentions are less clear, however. When his campaign first took off last
autumn, he was sometimes accused of being a Tymoshenko ‘project’; but now his
main priority is to make the best use of his new support. Tymoshenko could
offer him the premiership, but would he really want to take it at such a
difficult economic period? An alliance of the two would also be ideologically
awkward: Tymoshenko has strongly emphasised welfare spending for two years,
Tihipko appeals to the new middle class.

Yanukovych, on the other hand, needs
Tihipko for this election, but he cannot deliver the votes that Yanukovych
would need in parliament to construct a new government or governing majority.
But if there were new parliamentary elections instead, Tihipko would grab a big
share of the Party of Regions’s vote.

2. Regional
Splits, and nose-holding votes

Another (over-lapping) theory is that the
‘other’ candidates’ supporters will follow past regional traditions. In other
words, voters in the west will back Tymoshenko and eastern voters will back Yanukovych.
There are two question-marks about this theory, however. First, Tymoshenko
needs a lot of orange votes in the west, but it will be a nose-holding vote.
Turnout may stay low. On Sunday the vote was 73.7% in Lviv, which is above
average; but normally turnout is a lot higher than average in patriotic west Ukraine.
Turnout went up in 2004, from 74.9% to (a dubious) 80.8% in the second round and
77.3% in the third. This time turnout could even go down, given the
predominance of negative sentiment and voting for the ‘lesser evil’ in this
election.

Second, Tihipko did well in all regions of Ukraine.
Ironically, this may mean that his vote is bound to split in round two.

3.
Political Technology, and votes for Mr ‘Against all’

The OSCE and Ukrainian civil society did a
great job in ensuring such a clean election in round one. The formal vote went
off with few problems. But dirty tricks are still possible. For example, it is
alleged that the Communist leader Symonenko is backed by businessmen close to
Tymoshenko, and may prove surprisingly neutral in round two.

There were three Yanukovych ‘technical
candidates’ (Ratushnyak, Brodsky and the famous Mr ‘Protyvsikh’ – the Ukrainian
spelling of ‘against all’, designed to siphon off a few disillusioned orange
voters in the west). Their job was only to add to Yanukovych’s supporters on
the election committees. By definition therefore they don’t have many votes to
pass on.

Both camps fear ‘provocations’ that could
shift voters’ mood, if normal campaigning won’t work.

The
Winner….

…is still difficult to predict. But we can
be sure the second round will be close. Tymoshenko will reduce the gap, but can
she close it? Observers are hoping for a big margin to settle the outcome, but
they may not get it. Most types of fraud were minimised in round one (the
voting lists were ‘washed’ of duplicate names and dead people, voting at home
was only 3%). The loser may complain in the courts, but therefore may not have
too much to complain about. The key court, the High Arbitration Court, is divided and
politicised. Protestors may hit the streets, but they will be more partisan and
politicised than in 2004. Disillusioned voters are not about to turn out in
their hundreds of thousands. An international mission could mediate, but
Ukrainians will mainly have to sort things out themselves.

And here are those results in full:

Viktor Yanukovych (Party of Regions)                          35.3%

Yuliya Tymoshenko (PM, Tymoshenko Block)             25.0%

Serhiy Tihipko (banker)                                                            13.1%

Arseniy Yatsenyuk (Front for Change)                         
7.0%

Viktor Yushchenko (President)                                     5.5%

Petro Symonenko (Communist)                                               
3.6%

Volodymyr Lytvyn (Chair of Rada)                                           2.4%

Oleh Tyahnybok (Freedom Party, far right)                               1.4%

Anatoliy Hrytsenko (former Defence
Minister)               1.2%

Inna Bohoslovska (pro-Russian)                                              
0.4%

Oleksandr Moroz (Socialist)                                                    
0.4%

Yuriy Kostenko (ex-Rukh)                                                      
0.2%

Lyudmila Suprun (People’s Democratic Party)              0.2%

Vasyl Protyvsikh (changed name)                                              0.2%

Oleksandr Pabat (Kiev ‘Civic Active’)                          0.1%

Serhiy Ratushnyak (Mayor of Uzhhorod)                                  0.1%

Mykhailo Brodsky (Free Democrats)                                         0.06%

Oleh Ryabokon (independent)                                      0.03%

Against all                                                                                 2.2%
Spoiled or rejected ballots                                                        1.6%

For more…

In Part One of Ukraine Decides, Andrew looks at what went wrong after 2004’s Orange Revolution. You can read Part One here

In Part Two of Ukraine Decides, Andrew examines why Europe should care about the Ukrainian election. You can read Part Two here

In Part Three of Ukraine Decides, Andrew told us what to watch out for on election night. You can read Part Three here here

In Part Four of Ukraine Decides, Andrew casts his eyes over the first exit polls. You can read Part Four here 

In Part Five of Ukraine Decides, Andrew looks at what the first official results mean. You can read Part Five here

You can listen to a podcast interview with Andrew Wilson talking about the elections here. You can also subscribe to ECFR podcasts via iTunes or podhoster.com.

Andrew Wilson is available for press interviews and comment on the elections. Click here for our press advisory.

The European Council on Foreign Relations does not take collective positions. ECFR publications only represent the views of their individual authors.

Author

Senior Policy Fellow

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter

We will store your email address and gather analytics on how you interact with our mailings. You can unsubscribe or opt-out at any time. Find out more in our privacy notice.