Ukraine Presidential Results: Calling it Right

NATOSource

Featured Publications

Kazakhstan and the United States: Twenty Years of Ambiguous Partnership

The Five Futures of Cyber Conflict and Cooperation

US Lessons for the Eurozone Restoring Confidence through Transparency

Prospects and Challenges for Increasing India-Pakistan Trade

A US-EU Action Plan for Supporting Democratization: Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia

Council News

Jonathan Paris Discusses Syrian Crisis with France 24

Jonathan Paris, nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council's South Asia Center, appeared on France 24 to discuss Russia's support for the Assad regime and what it means for a possible UN resolution against Syria.

Damon Wilson US Senate Testimony: Ukraine at a Crossroads

On February 1, Atlantic Council executive vice president Damon Wilson testified at a hearing of the US Senate Committe on Foreign Relations on the topic: "Ukraine at a Crossroads: What's at Stake for the US and Europe?"

Michele Dunne on US-Egypt Relations for NPR's Morning Edition

Relations between the US and Egypt have taken a downturn since Egyptian authorities raided the offices of seventeen nongovernmental organizations in December - three of them US-funded. Michele Dunne, director of the Atlantic Council's Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, spoke on NPR's Morning Edition about the situation and what it means for US aid to Egypt.

MORE NEWS

FEATURED ISSUE

South Asia Predictions for 2012

The South Asia Center receives guidance and support from many experts throughout the world. Our senior fellows, guest-speakers, Center patrons, and visitors contribute heavily to the Center’s mission to “wage peace,” and engage the international community in the region. The Center asked our contributors the simple, but key question, “What you do expect in 2012?”

Home :: Transatlantic Relations

Ukraine Presidential Results: Calling it Right

Adrian Karatnycky | January 18, 2010

On January 15th, I offered my predictions for Ukraine's January 17th presidential vote. All in all, they held up quite well.

As I noted then, they were made based on internal polling conducted by the leading campaigns in the last two weeks, incorporation of trends and a little bit of guess work. But above all it suggested that the campaigns had a good handle on what was likely to occur in the days before the actual vote.

Overall, I predicted all the results to within roughly 1 percent of the actual result. And the 9.5 percent gap between opposition challenger Viktor Yanukovych and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko that I posited was actually 10.4 percent, so I was again off by less that a percentage point.

Ukraine Presidential Elections First Round:
My Predictions: Actual Results with 99.3 percent Differential: of the vote counted

Yanukovych 34.0 35.4 1.4
Tymoshenko 24.5 25.0 0.5
Tyhypko 12.5 13.0 0.5
Yatseniuk 6.5 7.0 0.5

Yushchenko 5.5 5.5 0
Symonenko 4.0 3.5 0.5

Lytvyn 3.5 2.3 1.2

Tyahnybok 2.0 1.4 0.6

Hrytsenko 1.0 1.2 0.2
Others/Against Everyone 6.5 5.7 0.8

It is too early to predict what will happen in round two. However, one thing is clear: Viktor Yanukovych enters the second round with a major advantage.

If you remove the likely 3-4 percent of voters who will spoil their ballots or vote against everyone, that leaves roughly 36 percent of the vote in contention between Tymoshenko and Yanukovych. Of these, Tymoshenko will need to capture roughly 23 percent--or nearly two out of every three -- to overtake Yanukovych's lead. Please keep in mind that many of those voters located in Eastern and Southern Ukraine, where Tymoshenko has not done well. Add to that the fact that some of her potential electorate in Western Ukraine backed Tymoshenko's bitter rival, President Yushchenko and, so, is unlikely to vote.

Bottom line: Tymoshenko has very long--though not yet impossible-- odds to succeed. Indeed, only her amazing skills as a campaigner leave open the possibility she could score a second round upset.

More on the implications of the first round vote and the likely direction of the second round in a future post.

Adrian Karatnycky [email], an Atlantic Council nonresident senior fellow, is Managing Partner at the Myrmidon Group LLC and co-director and co-founder of the Ukrainian-Jewish encounter.