You're reading: Businessweek: Yanukovych’s party tops Ukraine vote rivals, exit poll shows

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s ruling party got more votes than his rivals in parliamentary elections today, an exit poll showed.

The Party of Regions got 28.1 percent, compared with 24.7 percent for opposition united under jailed ex-Premier Yulia Tymoshenko, according to an e-mailed survey by the Razumkov Center for Economic and Political Studies and the Democratic Initiatives Foundation in the capital, Kiev. The poll covers voting for candidates on party lists, which determines half the legislature’s 450 seats, while the rest are elected in single-mandate districts.


Yanukovych, 62, who has roused ethnic Russians in the regions around his native Donetsk by bolstering the status of the Russian language, trumpets stability, economic expansion and this summer’s Euro 2012 soccer tournament among his party’s achievements. While graft has worsened, European ties have soured and growth may reverse in the second half of the year, opponents have struggled since former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko was imprisoned in 2011.


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