Statement of OPORA on the Second round of the Presidential election

According to the provisional results of the long-term and short-term observation of the regular Presidential election in Ukraine (conducted since October, 2018), the Civil Network OPORA reports that the electoral process was of a competitive nature. The voting process and the period of pre-election campaigning mostly complied with the basic international standards of democratic elections.

Voters were comprehensively informed and provided with actual alternatives for expressing their will, which broadly displayed the political parties represented in the society, and reflected the entire range of civic and political attitudes. The state provided citizens with due conditions for exercising their voting rights, with no pressure from authorities or other subjects during the election days on March 31, and on April 21.

The real competitiveness of elections was unfortunately accompanied with significant shortcomings in the electoral process that are systemic in nature. Non-transparent funding for official activities and implicit election campaigning, the shadowy nature of funding for campaigning activities and the work of election commission members,  misuse of administrative resources and negative information campaigns remain problems that indicate a need to reinforce legal and practical guarantees for more democratic elections in Ukraine.

During the run-off election of the President of Ukraine on April 21, OPORA conducted a parallel vote tabulation on the basis of a representative and statistically justified sample for Ukraine. Based on the reports of 1299 out of 1305 specially trained and officially registered observers, OPORA can state with 99% confidence the following results for the Presidential election (1299 out of 1305 observers, 99.6% of polling stations with 811,907 votes):

Zelenskyi 73,2%
Poroshenko 24,3%
Spoilt ballots 2,5%

The full statement can be found here: