President Volodymyr Zelensky’s party, Servant of the People, will win the parliamentary election in Ukraine with 43.9 percent of the vote, according to the results of the National Exit Poll.
Exactly three months after he won a landslide victory in the presidential election, Zelensky has secured control of the parliament.
It is too early to say how many seats Zelensky’s party will end up with. Roughly one half of the Ukrainian parliament is elected on party tickets. The rest are elected in 199 individual local races, which are not reflected in the national exit polls.
If Zelensky’s party is successful in the local races, it could form a single-party majority and would not need to form a coalition with other parties. For that, it will need to win 226 seats or more. Zelensky showed national strengthen, according to the national exit poll, gaining 39 percent in the west, 45 percent in the center, 50 percent in the south and 38 percent in the east.
Pro-Russian party Opposition Platform — For Life took second place with 11.5 percent support, according to the National Exit Poll.
Former President Petro Poroshenko’s European Solidarity party is coming in third with 8.9 percent.
Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna party will receive 7.6 percent.
Voice, a new party led by rock star Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, is getting 6.3 percent in the National Exit Poll, meaning that it will make it into parliament.
The threshold for a party to make it into parliament is 5 percent.
The Central Election Commission is now beginning the vote count. It will be publishing the results as they come in.
Voter turnout in the election was 49.53 percent as of 8 p.m. in 51 of 199 districts — showing that it’s going to be lower than the 62 percent voter turnout during the presidential election in April.
The National Exit Poll, a joint initiative by several pollsters, published its preliminary results at 8 p.m. Kyiv time, when the polling stations closed in Ukraine. This data reflects the results as of 6 p.m.
