Parliamentary election campaigning kicks off today

Today is the first official day of campaigning for the October 28 parliamentary election in Ukraine. The election will be the first since a new law was signed into effect in December 2011 that made three important changes to the election system: (1) returns to a dual mandate system that was used in 1998 and 2002 – 225 seats will be elected by party lists and the other 225 seats will be elected by simple-majority constituencies, (2) raises the threshold for one party to win seats in parliament from 3% to 5% of the overall vote, (3) and bans different political parties from participating in elections as a single bloc.

Recent political party support survey

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Party                                June 2012 
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Party of Regions (Azarov)    27.6%
Fatherland (Tymoshenko)*   25.6%
Udar (Klitschko)                  9.5%
Communists (Symonenko)   7.1%
———————————
Total opposition                  35.1%
Total pro-presidential          34.7%
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* Opposition includes Fatherland (Tymoshenko Bloc + Front of Changes) and Udar; Pro-presidential includes the Party of Regions and Communists. The survey was conducted May 23-June 1 with 2,042 respondents. Margin of error ±2.3%.
Source: Razumkov Center

Brad Wells: All of the major political parties have in fact already been preparing for months. We expect a particularly hard-fought and difficult campaign season. Though the opposition parties are ahead in opinion surveys, according to our projections, the Party of Regions is likely to maintain a majority in parliament after the election on the strength of its power base in Ukraine’s most populated regions (as 50% of seats will be assigned by voting in constituencies).