You're reading: Mayoral runoff elections could take place in Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Lviv and Odesa

Mayoral elections in the largest Ukrainian cities were highly competitive on Oct. 25, with the notable exception of Kharkiv, as most of the races are heading for runoffs.

The front-runners are from different parties including the Bloc of President Petro Poroshenko, Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovy’s Samopomich, offshoots of disgraced ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions and oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky’s Ukrop.

Under Ukrainian law, a runoff happens if the leading candidate fails to get at least 50 percent of the vote.

In the second round, the leading candidates’ chances will depend on whether they will be able to mobilize their electorate and persuade other candidates to endorse them.

Political analyst Vitaly Bala told the Kyiv Post that front-runners could trade certain positions at their respective city administrations and councils for other candidates’ support.

Though the official results are yet to be announced, there is exit poll data for major mayoral elections.

Kyiv

In the Kyiv mayoral election, the front-runner has a big lead. Incumbent mayor Vitali Klitschko, who is supported by the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, got 38.4 percent of the vote, while the runner-up is Sergiy Gusovsky from the Samopomich party with 9.2 percent, according to an exit poll conducted by Savik Shuster Studio, the political TV shows producer.

According to a Ukrainian Voters Committee exit poll, the runner-up is Volodymyr Bondarenko from Batkivshchyna with 8.7 percent, while Klitschko received 40.4 percent.

Dnipropetrovsk

The Dnipropetrovsk mayoral race is one of the hottest. It is a fierce battle between Kolomoisky’s allies and associates of Yanukovych.

Borys Filatov from Ukrop party, who is a member of the Verkhovna Rada and was a deputy governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast under Kolomoisky’s governorship, received 41.6 percent, while Oleksandr Vilkul, who was head of the region under Yanukovych, got 32 percent, according to Shuster Live.

Lviv

In Lviv, the current mayor Andriy Sadovy, Samopomich’s leader, has an even stronger lead than Klitschko. He received 48.6 percent, while Ruslan Koshulynsky from the nationalist Svoboda party got 14 percent, Shuster Live said.

Odesa

The incumbent mayor is also leading in Odesa, and it is not yet clear whether there will be a second round in the city.

Some exit polls predicted a run-off, while others forecast victory in the first round for Mayor Hennady Trukhanov.

According to Shuster Live, Trukhanov got 47.6 percent of the vote, while Sasha Borovik, an aide to Odesa Oblast Governor Mikheil Saakashvili backed by the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, ended up with 30.8 percent.

But an exit poll by another organization, called For Fair Elections, said that Trukhanov’s share of the vote was 53 percent, while Borovik received 29 percent.

Odesa’s Dumskaya news site claimed without specifying the source that Trukhanov had gotten 51.5 percent after 25 percent of the votes were counted, while Borovik’s percentage stood at 23.7 percent. The city’s Timer news site said, citing its own estimates, that Trukhanov had received 53.4 percent after 75 percent of the votes were counted, while Borovik’s share was 24.4 percent.

Saakashvili dismissed the reports as “nonsense.”

“Dumskaya, which is completely controlled by a former member of the Party of Regions who is now a local representative of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, is spreading intentionally falsified results according to which a runoff must not happen,” he wrote on Facebook on Oct. 26, referring to Oleksiy Honcharenko, a member of the Verkhovna Rada from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc.

Borovik told the Kyiv Post that the results would also depend on alleged vote rigging, especially in a race where Trukhanov’s percentage was hovering around 50 percent.

“When we’re talking about one tenth of a percentage point, even small violations lead to incorrect results,” he said.

Trukhanov’s spokeswoman Natalya Maltseva did not respond to repeated phone calls.

Borovik said that his team had documents proving vote rigging in favor of Trukhanov. He cited a document with voting results at a polling station where the number of votes for Trukhanov was corrected upwards.

Meanwhile, Maria Gaidar, a Saakashvili aide who is running for Odesa Oblast’s council, was expelled from a polling station after disputing the official number of voters, Borovik added.

There were also cases when the number of votes for Trukhanov rapidly soared in an hour and a half at some polling stations and was at odds with those areas’ demographics, Borovik said.

Previously observers in Odesa said there were cases of vote buying and registration of dead people, while a Kyiv Post reporter saw violations of campaigning rules.

Kharkiv

In Kharkiv, support for the incumbent mayor was more overwhelming than in Odesa. Mayor Hennady Kernes, backed by the Vidrodzhennya party of ex-Yanukovych allies, won a landslide victory with 59.3 percent of the vote, while Taras Sitenko from Samopomich trailed far behind with 16.4 percent, the Ukrainian Voters Committee said.

Analysts attributed Kernes’ victory in the first round to a lack of strong, well-known candidates among his opponents.

Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at [email protected].