Exit polls: seven parties get into the parliament (UPDATES)

Those that did not
make it to Verkhovna Rada are Civil Position party, headed by former defense
minister Anatoliy Hrytsenko, and, surprisingly, Sergiy Tigipko’s Strong Ukraine.

For the first time in 23
years of independent Ukraine’s history, Communist Party is also out, which
makes it historical elections for the young democratic state. Communists,
however, may still have few deputies elected in single mandate constituencies.

Unexpectedly, the
party of Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovy Samopomich outperformed Oleh Lyashko’s
Radical Party and got the third place, according to exit polls.

The victory of most parties was predicted by sociological polls released by the
Democratic Initiatives Foundation and Kyiv International
Institute of Sociology few days before Oct. 26 vote. The surprise, however,
turned out to be nationalist Svoboda Party which did not make it into the
parliament according to the preliminary polls but in fact got much more votes.
Serhiy Tigipko’s Strong Ukraine party, vice versa, was supposed to overcome a
five percent threshold but in fact won much less votes.

“These are rather unexpected results, in particular
for sociologists,” said Iryna Bekeshkina, head of the Democratic Initiatives
Foundation. “Over 32 percent of uncertain voters, according to
the preliminary poll, was a lot. Therefore we anticipated surprises.”

Below are the results
of most respectable exit polls of voters on their way out of polling stations
on Oct. 26:

National exit poll

Bloc of Petro
Poroshenko – 23 percent;

Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s
People’s Front – 21.3 percent;

Samopomich – 13.2 percent;

Opposition Bloc – 7.6 percent;

Oleh Lyashko’s Radical
Party – 6.4 percent;

Svoboda – 6.3 percent;

Yulia Tymoshenko’s
Batkivshchyna – 5.6 percent;

Civil Position – 3.5 percent;

Communist Party – 2.9 percent;

Serhiy Tigipko’s
Strong Ukraine – 2.6 percent.

Democratic Initiatives joins the Kyiv International
Institute of Sociology and the Razumkov Center for a joint exit poll that
interviews some 20,000 people all over Ukraine except for the Russian-annexed
Crimean peninsula and separatist-controlled areas of Donetsk and Luhansk
oblasts.

International exit poll

Bloc of Petro
Poroshenko – 22.2 percent;

Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s
People’s Front – 21.8 percent;

Samopomich – 14.2 percent;

Opposition Bloc – 7.8 percent;

Oleh Lyashko’s Radical
Party – 6.4 percent;

Svoboda – 5.8 percent;

Yulia Tymoshenko’s
Batkivshchyna – 5.6 percent.

International exit poll was organized by four
partners: the government of Canada, Ukraine’s Sociological Group Rating,
Lithuania’s Baltic Surveys/ The Gallup Organization and The International
Republican Institute.

Exit poll of the Inter TV Channel

Bloc of Petro
Poroshenko – 23.1 percent;

Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s
People’s Front – 19.7 percent;

Samopomich – 11 percent;

Opposition Bloc – 9.9 percent;

Oleh Lyashko’s Radical
Party – 6.6 percent;

Svoboda – 5.8 percent;

Yulia Tymoshenko’s
Batkivshchyna – 5.7 percent.

This exit poll was ordered by Inter Channel and
conducted by Social Monitoring Center and Ukrainian Institute for Social
Researches named after Oleksandr Yaremenko.

Read how Ukraine elected its parliament on Oct. 26 here.