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The parliamentary political forces were unable to obtain a landslide victory in the local elections. In the regions, their positions were notably pushed aside by local projects and parties of mayors. About who was in the favorites of this race, in the material of RBC-Ukraine.
As a result of the elections held on October 25, there were many favorites, but not a single winner. Neither party managed to finish in the local “monopower” race across the country.
Despite the fact that some electoral commissions have been counting the votes for the third week, the final picture of the vote is already clear: the reins of government in the regions will be fragmented between different political forces.
“Servant of the People”, “European Solidarity” and “Opposition Platform – For Life” have become the favorites of the parties of the “Parliamentary League”. But in many regions and regional centers they failed to squeeze the so-called regional parties and projects of popular mayors.
The fight for the mayoral positions gave the parliamentary forces even more difficult. In none of the big cities did their candidates win in the first round and in very few they will continue to fight in the second.
Parliamentary Legionaries
IN “Servants of the People” they call themselves the winners of the local elections in terms of the number of seats in the regional and district councils. According to the calculations of the presidential party, it is winning 20% of the mandates in the regional councils of the whole country, while its rivals obtain less: European Solidarity – 16%, OPSZ – 13% and Batkivshchyna – 10%. The “five” parties that have obtained the most seats in the regional councils are closed by “For Maybutne” with 8%.
Many experts and critics of Zelensky’s political force regard his result as failure rather than victory. Especially when compared to the 43% it received in the parliamentary elections a year ago.
“The parliamentary parties acted more than modestly. The best figures were shown by Servant of the People, but this success is very conditional: 20% of the seats in the regional councils are very few for the ruling party, which just a year ago showed a ultra high score, “he said in a conversation with RBC. -The Ukrainian political scientist Kost Bondarenko.
The presidential team categorically disagrees with their defeat. They point out that before the “Servant of the People” had no representation whatsoever in the municipalities, but now it passed “equally” to the self-government bodies of the entire country.
According to preliminary results, “Servant of the People” will lead its factions to all regional councils (except Donetsk and Lugansk, where no elections were held). In addition, the political force took the initiative in four regional councils: Dnepropetrovsk, Zhitomir, Chernivtsi and Sumy.
While in the big cities the results of the vote were not so successful for the presidential political force. Its candidates can run in the second round for the mayor’s office only in Poltava and Uzhgorod. In addition, according to preliminary data, Zelensky’s party did not show a result higher than second place in all municipalities of the regional centers. In the capital, it took only fifth place with 7.53%, and it does not go to the Ivano-Frankivsk and Lviv municipalities at all.
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Last year, the result of Zelensky’s political force in Lviv also did not go off the scale: there, “Servant of the People” ranked third, getting between 15% and 17% of the votes in the city. But in Ivano-Frankivsk it ranked first with almost 26%. And in the capital, by a large margin, it bypassed all competitors, having received about 36.5%
The Kiev championship in these elections has already been officially carried “European solidarity”… He gained 20.5%, just half a percent ahead of Vitali Klitschko’s IMPACT. Last year, Eurosolidarity gained 16.7% in the capital.
In Petro Poroshenko’s political force, they do not hide that they are satisfied with his result in the local elections. Eurosolidarity highlights that it is the only party that has had representation in all the town councils of the regional centers and regional councils. But things are worse with the mayoral elections: the candidates of this party reached the second round only in Lvov, Rovno and Sumy.
In addition to the capital, the EU won first place in the elections to the Lvov and Rivne municipalities. It will also host the largest factions in four regional councils: Lviv, Kiev, Rivne and Ternopil.
Like Eurosolidarity, its rating positions have strengthened slightly and “Opposition platform: for life”… He won a victory in four regional councils: in Nikolaev, Zaporozhye, Odessa and Kherson. Preliminarily, the political force passes into 16 regional councils, not six.
In Nikolaev, the party gained leadership in the municipal council elections and its candidate will compete in the second round for mayor. In addition, the OPSZ people’s deputy entered the second round of the elections for the mayor of Odessa.
According to Bondarenko, both the EU and the PLO have shown a fairly good result, but without having mayors of their own, they can only “be content” with a high percentage of votes in municipal elections. And this in no way guarantees real power.
“Having shown good results in the East of the country, the same HLE will continue practically without being able to find partners to form a majority. Even with indicators of 20-30%, they will have to be in opposition. In 2007, the Party of Regions also won almost 33% of the vote in the elections. The Verkhovna Rada, but at the same time could not create a coalition. So this is kind of a Pyrrhic victory, “Bondarenko suggested.
The indicators for other parliamentary parties are even more modest. “Homeland” he won the championship at the Kirovograd regional council, as well as at the Uzhgorod and Sumy municipalities. In Sumy, your candidate will run for mayor in the second round.
According to official figures, “Vote” so far it only passes to the Lviv Regional Council, the Kiev City Council, as well as the councils of various other regional centers. Your nominee will compete in the second round with the current mayor of Cherkassy, who was nominated for “For Maybutne.”
“I would not associate the Golos outcome solely with the withdrawal of Svyatoslav Vakarchuk. The party was poorly engaged in building its branched structural network. 2019 financial reports showed that only Golos and Servants of the People did not have their own registered local cells. “he added. – said the publication of the head of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine (KIU) Oleksiy Koshel.
According to Bondarenko, it was not bad “like for the first time” “For the future.” But both he and Koshel believe that the efforts and resources expended by the party are clearly incomparable to their result.
This political force, represented by the group of deputies of the same name in the Rada, can boast of primacy in the regional councils of Volyn and Khmelnytsky. too “For the future” it will receive the largest factions in the municipalities of Poltava, Cherkassy and Lutsk. In the last two, the candidates of this political force will run for mayor in the second round.
Another party created on the basis of the parliamentary group – “Dovira”, won first place in the Poltava Regional Council elections.
Local flavor
One of the characteristics of this campaign, which RBC-Ukraine predicted even before the elections, is the enormous popularity of regional parties and incumbent mayoral parties.
“Even during individual elections in the OTG, we observed how self-nominated candidates or local candidates representing influential extra-parliamentary parties obtained the first places. It is the same in these local elections: among the key winners are representatives of parties from which We hadn’t heard of before the start of the election campaign. These are mainly parties representing the mayors of the city, “says Koshel.
Thanks to decentralization, many mayors have been able to significantly increase their support over the past five years. Using even a fraction of the resulting resource, mayors were able to demonstrate to residents that positive change was taking place in their city.
And from this side, they certainly seem much more effective than all their predecessors, who, however, had no such resources and no such powers. As a result, the majority of the acting mayors of the big cities either won “dry” or advanced to the second round by a fair margin.
For example, in Ivano-Frankivsk, the current mayor Ruslan Martsinkiv, who came from “Freedom”, obtained 85% of the votes in the first round. The same political force won the leadership in the elections to the Ivano-Frankivsk regional and municipal councils. A similar situation has developed in Ternopil. The current mayor of Svoboda, Sergei Nadal, won almost 75% and the party itself took first place in the town hall.
Another vivid example of how the mayor’s personal rating is projected for his party is the vote in Khmelnytsky. In this city, Alexander Simchishin, who was re-elected by one more cadence of Svoboda, received 87% of the support of the townspeople in the first round. The political force itself decided not to participate in the elections in the region. Instead, in both the regional council and the municipal council, the mayor’s party “Team Simchishin” took the initiative. Your consultants probably thought that going for a custom brand would be more successful.
And there are many such examples. Mayor Gennady Kernes’s Race Winner Match “Kernes Block – Kharkov Successful” ranked first in elections in the city and regional councils. The leadership in the municipal and regional council of Chernihiv was received by the party “Native home” Mayor Vladislav Atroshenko, who won 77.5% in the first round.
In Vinnitsa “Groisman’s Ukrainian Strategy” he won the elections to the city council and the regional council. And the candidate of this political force, Sergei Morgunov, retained the mayor’s seat immediately after the first round. And in the case of Vinnitsa, most likely, the popularity of the leader of the political force in this region overlapped the effect of the qualification of mayor.
In addition, local parties won the Cherkasy regional council elections: “Cherkasy”and transcarpathic – “Rydne Zakarpattia”.
“The winners were only the regional projects that were created around local leaders and local elites. It is they who will form local power. And each region has its own winner. In that sense, we have a kind of fragmentation of the country: When there is no political force, it could claim control over all regions, “says Kost Bondarenko.
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The demand for local political forces “skyrocketed” not only because of the good work of the mayors. But also because existing national political forces are less and less meeting the needs of voters. In local elections, the list of candidates and parties is broader than in parliamentary elections, making it easier to find an alternative.
However, it is unlikely that many of these local parties will go beyond local politics and storm the Verkhovna Rada in the next election. The question is who at that time will be able to win this great electoral niche of the “disappointed and distrustful”: in 2019, Vladimir Zelensky and his “Servant of the People” did.
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