Exit Poll Gives Orange Parties Victory

According to a national exit poll held by the Democratic Initiatives Foundation (DIF), one of the only organizations to correctly predict the 2006 parliamentary elections, the Party of Regions will finish with 35.3% of the vote followed by the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc (BYT) with 31.5% and the President’s Our Ukraine Bloc with 13.5%. Two other parties, the Communists (5.1%) and the Lytvyn Bloc (3.8%) will make it over the 3% barrier to enter the Rada. The poll has a margin of error of 2%. As of 11:30 Kyiv time, the Central Elections Commission (CEC) had tallied 53.19% of the vote, the Yulia Tymoshenko is currently leading with 33.24% of the vote followed by the Party of Regions with 30.72%, Our Ukraine with 15.6%, the Communists with 5.08%, the Lytvyn Bloc with 4.15% and the Socialist Party currently has 3.14% of the vote. The CEC plans to finish counting ballots by the end of the day. Nick Piazza: If the DIF poll is correct, it would give a Tymoshenko-Our Ukraine coalition a 45% to 44.1% advantage over a coalition of the Party of Regions with the Communist and Lytvyn Bloc. Tymoshenko has already called for a meeting with Our Ukraine to hash out the formalities of their previously-signed coalition agreement and is scheduled to meet with the President later today. Our Ukraine has made no official announcement about its coalition intentions, thus we expect several days of negotiations lie ahead. At her party rally last night, several BYT members suggested that a failure by the President to reunite his party with Tymoshenko this time would insure a Tymoshenko presidency in 2009. Expect more political theater this week as the Party of Regions has already called on its supporters to attend a rally in the center of Kyiv today.