UKRAINE: Exit poll gives Petro Poroshenko outright first round victory in Ukrainian presidential election - UPDATE

Record ID: 695328

  • Title: UKRAINE: Exit poll gives Petro Poroshenko outright first round victory in Ukrainian presidential election - UPDATE
  • Date: 25th May 2014
  • Summary: NEWS CONFERENCE
  • Embargoed: 9th June 2014 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Ukraine
  • Country: Ukraine
  • Topics: General,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA1Y03Y7HFWK1GFVW2WAQQX9XLR
  • Story Text: Confectionary magnate Petro Poroshenko won Ukraine's presidential election on Sunday (May 25) with an absolute majority, exit polls showed, averting the need for a runoff vote next month that he warned could destabilize the country.
    "In the whole of Ukraine Poroshenko got 55.9, Tymoshenko 12.9, Lyashko 8.0," announced Iryna Bekshkna of the Democratic Initiative.
    Two polls gave Poroshenko, a billionaire businessman with long experience in government, 55.9 to 57.3 percent, well ahead of former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko in second place with just over 12 percent. If confirmed by results on Monday (May 26), there will be no need for a runoff vote on June 15.
    Ukrainians, weary of six months of political turmoil, hope their new president will be able to pull their country of 45 million people back from the brink of bankruptcy, dismemberment and civil war.
    Yet the scale of the challenge Poroshenko faces was highlighted as armed pro-Russian separatists barred people from voting in much of Ukraine's Donbass industrial heartland on Sunday.
    Poroshenko, 48, has promised closer economic and political ties with the West in defiance of Russian President Vladimir Putin, but he will also have to try to mend shattered relations with Ukraine's giant northern neighbor, which provides most of its natural gas and is the major market for its exports.
    The National Exit Poll 2014, conducted by a consortium of Democratic Initiative, the Kiev International Sociology Institute (KMIS) and the Razumkov Ukrainian Centre for Economic and Political Research, had an error margin of 3.5 percent.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2014. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
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