Yanukovych Unofficial Winner in Ukraine’s Battle for the Presidency

Victor Yanukovych has won Sunday’s bitterly fought presidential vote, according to exit polls.
Yanukovych Unofficial Winner in Ukraine’s Battle for the Presidency
Opposition leader, and apparent winner of the Ukraine presidency, Victor Yanukovych, casts his vote in the capital of Kyiv on Feb. 7. Exit polls gave Yanukovich 49 percent of the popular vote and his rival, current Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko 45 percent. (Vladimir Borodin/The Epoch Times )
2/7/2010
Updated:
10/1/2015
<a><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/09/UKRAINE-C.jpg" alt="Opposition leader, and apparent winner of the Ukraine presidency, Victor Yanukovych, casts his vote in the capital of Kyiv on Feb. 7. Exit polls gave Yanukovich 49 percent of the popular vote and his rival, current Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko 45 percent. (Vladimir Borodin/The Epoch Times )" title="Opposition leader, and apparent winner of the Ukraine presidency, Victor Yanukovych, casts his vote in the capital of Kyiv on Feb. 7. Exit polls gave Yanukovich 49 percent of the popular vote and his rival, current Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko 45 percent. (Vladimir Borodin/The Epoch Times )" width="320" class="size-medium wp-image-1823070"/></a>
Opposition leader, and apparent winner of the Ukraine presidency, Victor Yanukovych, casts his vote in the capital of Kyiv on Feb. 7. Exit polls gave Yanukovich 49 percent of the popular vote and his rival, current Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko 45 percent. (Vladimir Borodin/The Epoch Times )
KYIV, Ukraine—Ukraine opposition leader Victor Yanukovych has won Sunday’s bitterly fought presidential vote, according to exit polls.

The unofficial results give Yanukovich 49 percent of the popular vote, with his rival, current Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, garnering 45 percent. Exit poll results are based on approximately 16,000 responses across the country, with a margin of error of 3 percent.

Official results will be announced by the Central Electoral Commission of Ukraine later on Monday. Political analysts expect the official results to mirror the exit polls, as they did in the first round of voting on Jan 17.

Yanukovych has won the “battle” but the war is not over.

Yanukovych told journalists at his headquarters that he already considers himself to be the future president. But Tymoshenko’s team was not willing to concede the war until results are confirmed.

National media reported many instances of violations during the voting process, including voter list irregularities and bomb scares at polling stations in the Donetsk region where Yanukovych has high support, which caused voting delays. Analysts, say they don’t expect those abnormalities to affect the final outcome.

Tymoshenko’s party, however, said they would seek legal expertise to examine all of the small violations to determine whether the election was overall legal or not. If it appears to have been illegal, then they will not accept the results.

“We have to fight for any vote,” Tymoshenko told reporters at a press conference on Sunday.

Pro-Russia Viktor Yanukovych previously ran in the 2004 presidential race and appeared to win, but admits widespread allegations that he’d rigged the results, the election was declared illegal by the Supreme Court and a runoff vote was ordered. The mass public protests against Yanukovych and in favor of rival Viktor Yushchenko was dubbed the Orange Revolution and Yushchenko swept into power. Yushchenko was eliminated from this year’s race in the first round of voting back in January.