Notes on recent elections / Electoral Studies 33 (2014) 343356

The OSCE/ODHIR election observation mission9 criticised the election, deeming it neither competitive, impartial nor transparent (OSCE/ODHIR, 2012). While the voting
process on polling day itself was generally assessed positively, the situation deteriorated during the count which
was evaluated as bad or very bad in 37% of cases observed.
6. Implications
Ultimately, results of parliamentary elections are of very
little importance in Belarusian domestic politics. The National Assembly has no say over the shape of government
or nomination of the prime minister. The elections exist to
present an appearance of electoral legitimacy for the authorities, and equally importantly, to demonstrate that the
opposition has been comprehensively beaten. The role of
deputies is not to represent the collective will of the voters,
but to pass legislation handed down by the Presidential
Administration.
With 63 of the deputies in parliament now also members of the pro-regime public association Belaya Rus, there
were renewed calls from some quarters for the organisation to be transformed into a ruling political party. However, plans to discuss any change at the congress of Belaya
Rus held on 3 November were postponed. Lukashenka
himself has previously resisted such demands, unwilling to
create an unnecessary additional layer between himself
and the general public.
While the opposition was under no illusion that the
authorities would actually allow them to win any seats,
they once again failed to agree on either a strategy or a
common platform which offered a coherent alternative to

353

the electorate. Even before this campaign was over, their

focus had already shifted to debates about tactics and potential consolidation on the road to the 2015 presidential
election. Unsurprisingly, voters remain highly apathetic
towards, and disinterested in, both the authorities and the
opposition. Finally, the results do not offer any window of
opportunity for a thaw in relations with the West, which
viewed the elections as neither free nor fair.
References
Central Election Commission of Belarus, 2008. Vybory Deputatov Palaty
Predstavitelei Natsionalnogo Sobraniya Respubliki Belarus Chetvertogo Sozyva. Available from: http://www.rec.gov.by/Archive-ElectionsPPNS4 (accessed 31.08.12.).
Central Election Commission of Belarus, 2012. Vybory Deputatov Palaty
Predstavitelei Natsionalnogo Sobraniya Respubliki Belarus Pyatogo
Sozyva. Available from: http://rec.gov.by/Elections-PP5 (accessed 15.
10.12.).
IISEPS, 2012a. Natsionalnyi Opros 212 Iyunya 2012. Available from:
http://iiseps.org/old/data12-26.html (accessed 04.07.13.).
IISEPS, 2012b. Natsionalnyi Opros 24 Sentyabrya 3 Oktyabrya 2012.
Available from: http://www.iiseps.org/old/data12-39.html (accessed
04.07.13.).
OSCE/ODHIR, 2012. Statement of Preliminary Findings and Conclusions:
Belarus Parliamentary Elections, 23 September 2012. Available from:
http://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/93975 (accessed 01.10.12.).
Potocki, R., 2011. Belarus: a tale of two elections. Journal of Democracy 22
(3), 4963.
Padhol, U.M., Marples, D.R., 2011. The 2010 presidential election in
Belarus. Problems of Post-Communism 58 (1), 316.
Silitski, V., 2009. Belarus a country in transition? The state, elections,
and the opposition. In: Fischer, S. (Ed.), Back From the Cold? the EU
and Belarus in 2009. Institute for Strategic Studies, Paris, pp. 2536.
Chaillot Paper No. 119.
White, S., Korosteleva-Polglase, E., 2006. The parliamentary election
and referendum in Belarus, October 2004. Electoral Studies 25 (1),
155160.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2013.07.007

The parliamentary elections in Ukraine, October 2012

Erik S. Herron
University of Kansas, 1541 Lilac Lane, Blake Hall, Lawrence, KS 66045, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 19 December 2012
Accepted 16 August 2013

On October 28, 2012, Ukrainian citizens voted in their

sixth parliamentary elections since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Over 20 million citizens cast ballots to
elect 450 members of the Verkhovna Rada, the countrys

The author was a short-term observer on this mission.

E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected].

unicameral legislative institution. As the rst election for

national-level institutions since Viktor Yanukovych gained
the presidency in 2010, the parliamentary contests were
widely viewed as a critical test of Ukraines democratic
trajectory. While the country had been seen as making
progress toward democracy after 2004s Orange Revolution, the Yanukovych administration had been accused of
restricting media freedoms, presiding over awed local

354

Notes on recent elections / Electoral Studies 33 (2014) 343356

elections, and abusing the judicial system to remove potential electoral rivals from competition. As in previous
parliamentary elections, the results revealed that Ukraine
continues to be a deeply divided society.

1. Electoral system
Ukraine has substantially altered its parliamentary
electoral system three times since its rst post-communist
election in 1994: from majority-runoff (1994) to a mixedmember system (1998, 2002), to a proportional representation system (2006, 2007), returning to a mixed-member
system for the 2012 campaign (see Herron, 2007). The
regime-supported Party of Regions and political opposition
initially supported the return to the mixed system, but
subsequent alterations to the rights of voters abroad and
the elimination of dual candidacy prompted opposition
discontent.
The election rules initially adopted for 2012 were similar
to the rules used in 1998: 450 seats, divided evenly into a
national PR district with a 5% threshold1 and SMD constituencies with winners determined by a plurality rule.
The new version of the law, however, banned blocs of
parties and did not include an against all option on the
ballot. Parliament reinstated the option of dual candidacy
that had been ruled unconstitutional and removed from the
2002 version of the mixed system, but it was once again
ruled unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court and
removed as an option for candidates.
While the new election rules were predominantly a
return to past practices, they included some innovations.
Most notably, Ukraine would follow Russias practice of
installing webcams in all polling sites as a tool ostensibly
designed to promote transparency. The return of singlemember districts also required reapportionment and
redistricting as the previous elections with local constituencies were held a decade prior. Reapportionment shifted
constituencies across regions due to population changes;
the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk lost three
districts compared to 2002, and they were shifted to Kyiv
and the western region of Ivano-Frankivsk. District
boundaries were also changed within regions, amid some
accusations of gerrymandering.

2. Contenders and issues

The Ukrainian party system has been divided along at
least two prominent cleavages in the post-Communist
period. The rst cleavage is a traditional left-right dimension, featuring variation in preferences about state intervention in economic activities. Ukraines economy
experienced a downturn in productive activities and the
value of the local currency after the nancial crisis in 2008.
Pre-election public opinion surveys revealed dissatisfaction
with many aspects of contemporary politics, but

1
The threshold was higher than the 4% used in 1998 or 2002, or the 3%
used in 2006 and 2007.
2
See, for example, the results of surveys conducted by IFES (2012).

respondents consistently identied economic conditions as

key concerns for the elections.2
The second cleavage is a national identity dimension,
with some parties advocating the pre-eminence of the
Ukrainian language, an approach to historical interpretation that favors folk heroes and symbols associated with
resistance to external forces (e.g., WWII era partisans), and
a strong foreign policy orientation toward accession to
European institutions. The other end of the identity
dimension supports enhanced status for the Russian language, a more benevolent view of Soviet-era history, and
recognition of important historic, cultural, and economic
connections with Russia.
In the 1990s, Ukraines party system was inchoate, with
many proto-parties contesting elections amid shifting
party afliations among politicians. The 2002 parliamentary election was critical notably for demonstrating the
then party-of-powers weakness and the development of a
strong opposition in the Our Ukraine bloc. The 2004 presidential election further enhanced the oppositions status
as post-election protests led to a re-vote and victory by the
opposition presidential candidate.
Since 2004, the Ukrainian party system has experienced
consolidation and institutionalization processes, although
it retains strong elements of the personalized politics that
have characterized electoral competition since independence. Following 2004s Orange Revolution, two parliamentary elections were held using nationwide party list
proportional representation with a 3% threshold. Four of
the ve parties that won seats passed the threshold in both
elections: the Party of Regions, Bloc of Yuliya Tymoshenko,
Our Ukraine, and the Communist Party of Ukraine. The
Socialist Party of Ukraine gained seats in 2006, but was
replaced in the Rada by the Bloc of Volodymyr Lytvyn in
2007.
Since 2007, some parties have undergone rebranding
due to new election rules and changes in political conditions, and several parties merged to enhance coordination.
The pro-regime Party of Regions incorporated the Strong
Ukraine party, led by a former presidential contender and
member of government. The Bloc of Yuliya Tymoshenko,
which emerged after 2007 as the leading opposition party
challenging the party-of-power, reclaimed its party name
of Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) and merged with the Front
of Change, led by former Rada speaker Arseniy Yatseniuk,
to offer a joint list and coordinated constituency nominations in the districts. This United Opposition also incorporated small parties into its campaign, including Reforms
and Order, Peoples Self-Defense For Ukraine, and the
Peoples Movement. Other prominent opposition organizations, such as Vitaliy Klychkos UDAR and Oleh Tyahnyboks right-wing Svoboda Party3 competed separately on
party lists. Svoboda coordinated SMD nominations with the
United Opposition but some pre-election withdrawals were
controversial, with UDAR alleging that the United Opposition had reneged on some agreements, especially in and
around the capital city.

For an assessment of Svobodas rise, see Shekhovtsov (2011).

Notes on recent elections / Electoral Studies 33 (2014) 343356

these alleged violations did not affect the certication of

results.

Table 1
Results of the parliamentary election in Ukraine, October 2012.
Party list

Party of Regions
Batkivshchyna
UDAR
Communist Party
Svoboda
United Center
Peoples Party
Oleg Lyashka Party
Soyuz
Independents
Other parties
Turnout
Wasted votes
Total seats

Votes

Votes (%)

6,116,746
5,209,090
2,847,979
2,687,269
2,129,933
N/A
N/A
221,144
N/A
N/A
1,175,858
20,388,019
1,397,002

30.0
25.5
14.0
13.2
10.4

1.1

5.8
58.0%
6.9%

SMD
seats

Total
seats

72
62
34
32
25
0
0
0
0
0
0

113
39
6
0
12
3
2
1
1
43

185
101
40
32
36
3
2
1
1
43

225

220

445a

Seats

Note: The calculation of turnout is based on valid votes cast. Parties

denoted N/A for the party list vote did not contest the proportional
component.
a
Five SMD races were not certied and by-elections will be held in
2013.
Source: Central Electoral Commission of Ukraine (http://www.cvk.gov.ua/).

Following Viktor Yanukovychs victory in the presidential election of 2010, several events raised concerns about
the status of democracy and the likelihood of free and fair
competition in the parliamentary elections. The most
serious issue was the jailing of former opposition leaders,
including former Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko, Justice Minister Yuriy Lutsenko, and Defense Minister Valeriy
Ivashchenko. While these former ofcials were ostensibly
convicted of charges related to the abuse of power, international and domestic observers alleged that the prosecutions were politically motivated.
The most substantial policy decision, in terms of its
likelihood to mobilize voters and inuence the fall 2012
campaign, was the debate over the status of the Russian
language. Ukraine is linguistically divided, with some citizens preferring to use Ukrainian and others Russian.4
Ukrainian is the countrys state language, but Russian is
widely spoken, especially in eastern and southern regions.
The Ukrainization of the country, in which Ukrainian
became the language for education and other ofcial interactions, has been used by political actors to mobilize
citizens in traditionally Russophone regions. The debate
over the language law, which would allow Russian
enhanced status in some regions, prompted protests by
advocates of Ukrainian national identity. The formalization
of the new law led some regions to elevate the status of
Russian while others actively opposed change.
Another critical factor in the campaign was the
perception that the Party of Regions would use administrative resources to secure election victories. Local elections, held in autumn 2010, revealed substantial
administrative problems in several regions. Domestic and
international observation groups identied signicant violations of proper procedures in some municipalities, but

355

A hybrid, Surzhyk, is also spoken in some parts of the countryside.

3. Results
Table 1 presents the ofcial results published online by
Ukraines Central Electoral Commission. Turnout in 2012
was almost identical to that of the previous election, with
58.0% of registered voters casting a ballot in 2012,
compared with 57.9% in 2007. This seems to mark a attening of the decline in turnout since independence: from
75.8% in 1994, 69.6% in 1998, 65.2% in 2002, to 59.0% in
2006.5 Although modifying the threshold could have
increased the proportion of wasted votes, it was lower in
2012 (6.85%) than in 2007 (11.4%).
The Party of Regions received the most seats overall
(185) and the most seats in both tiers of the mixed system. Nonetheless, the partys performance was substantially better in the constituency races than in the
party list component. The two main opposition parties
nished in second and third places in terms of the proportion of votes received on the party list and in the total
number of seats acquired. Batkivshchyna and UDAR
gained more seats in the party list component than in
the constituencies, garnering a total of 101 and 40 seats,
respectively. The third main opposition party, Svoboda,
received 36 seats, giving the opposition 177 seats. The
Communist Party, small parties, and independents
accounted for the remainder. By winning a plurality, the
Party of Regions would have the rst opportunity to form
a coalition, but it fell 41 short of the 226 seats needed for
a majority.
Regional divisions were once again evident in the party
list and constituency votes, with the Party of Regions performing especially well in the eastern and southern areas of
the country, and opposition parties performing better in
the western regions. The region around the capital city of
Kyiv was especially hotly contested in this election, in part
due to the failure of opposition parties to fully coordinate
nominations in this area.
The Central Electoral Commission registered 3797 international observers from national and organizational
missions and 40,017 domestic observers. In addition,
citizen-observers participated in data-gathering projects
coordinated by non-governmental organizations (e.g.,
Maidan Monitoring, http://maidan.org.ua/). Domestic and
international monitoring groups varied in their assessments of election quality but some of the most prominent
organizations noted that the areas of greatest concern
occurred not on election day, but prior to and following the
casting of ballots.6 In the pre-election period, uneven media
coverage and changes to the composition of electoral
commissions raised concerns.7 Further controversies then

5
Turnout gures are from Ukraines Central Electoral Commission,
except for data from 1994 which come from International IDEA. The IDEA
data consistently report higher turnout than the CEC, but they also show
a general decline in participation over time (with an uptick in 2002).
6
See, for example, OSCE (2012).
7
The Ukrainian non-governmental organization Cifra published an
analysis of the change in commission members. See Boyko (2012).

356

Notes on recent elections / Electoral Studies 33 (2014) 343356

emerged after election day. Vote tabulation in several

contested districts was scrutinized, and district electoral
commissions were accused of tampering with results. Due
to concerns about the integrity of the vote, results in ve
constituencies were not certied. By-elections for the ve
remaining seats have not yet been scheduled.
4. Effects
Because of election rule changes permitting independent candidates to contest the election in constituency
races, it is difcult to fully compare the results of 2012 with
recent contests. Election results tracked closely with parliamentary party alignments after the 2006 and 2007
elections, propelled by the nationwide party list vote and
the requirement that deputies remain afliated with their
parties. The re-establishment of the mixed system in 2012
produced victories by independent candidates, but many
independents leaned toward established parties. The Party
of Regions received ten more seats in 2012 than in 2007 but
it also beneted from independents aligning with its parliamentary party. At the time this article was completed,
the Party of Regions had 207 members in its parliamentary
party, Batkivshchyna 92, UDAR 42, Svoboda 36, Communist
Party 32, and the remaining 33 were unafliated.8
Early meetings of the newly elected Rada were marked
by several disruptions, including a widely publicized stght among deputies. On December 13, 2012, Mykola
Azarov was reafrmed as prime minister, the post he has
held since Viktor Yanukovych became president in 2010.
Azarov received 252 votes, with support coming from
members of the Party of Regions, the Communist Party, and
deputies who remained independent.
The new parliament and government faces a substantial
agenda to address, including the ongoing controversy over
the treatment of opposition politicians and the media,
management of natural resource disputes with Russia,
discussions about joining a customs union with post-Soviet
countries, moving toward or away from European
Union accession, and efforts to modify Ukraines
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2013.08.007

8
Ukraines parliament provides updated information about parliamentary alignments on its website. See Verkhovna Rada (2013).

constitution. Further, the current constellation of parties

seated in the Rada will alter the substance and style of
debate. Svobodas delegation is most likely to generate
controversy, as some of the partys most extreme members
have made intolerant remarks, or participated in overtly
racist and homophobic activities. The traditional opposition, currently represented by Batkivshchyna and UDAR, is
likely to be challenged by its association with Svoboda,
especially if Svobodas rhetoric and actions continue to
advocate policies at odds with a more pro-European
orientation. The responses of Ukraines newly elected
parliament to these challenges will provide further evidence about the regimes orientation toward democratization or increasing authoritarianism.
Acknowledgments
The author thanks the National Science Foundation for
Individual Research and Development time to complete the
article. All interpretations are the responsibility of the
author and do not reect the views of the NSF.
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