Very Strong Performance by Regions of Ukraine
not fully reflected in the numbers yet
I've had a few visitors to the site get mislead by the current polling numbers, so I wanted to write a quick corrective entry here. According to the Ukraine-wide vote count of 50% of votes, RoU has 27% and Tymoshenko 23%. However, this number is misleading.
A more informed number would take into account the percentage of votes which have been counted by region. (Sorry, they don't have links directly to the page - in Ukrainian it's fourth group, third item along the left side menubar. I found the English version hard to understand.) The important detail here is that the percentage of votes that have been counted in pro-Tymoshenko areas is consistently 20% higher than those counted in pro-RoU areas (60% to 40%) everywhere except Kyiv. This means that as those numbers reach parity, Tymoshenko is going to fall behind and Yanukovych is going to pull ahead considerably.
Luhansk is particularly far behind, at only 35% counted. Donetsk is at 41%, and Volinsk, where Yulia has had a strong showing, is at 62%.
So expect RoU to pull up considerably, maybe over 35% by the end of voting. This might mean results a lot closer to a 50-50 split than I think the polls predicted. It would also make for a lot more hung-Parliament votes.
Also worth mentioning that Tymoshenko is doing much better than NSNU relative to the pre-election predictions. This argues that, as Foreign Notes and others have mentioned, her campaign was much more effective and understandable to Ukrainian voters. I would also consider it a repudiation by the Orange areas of the country of NSNU's waffling on 1) whether they might join in coalition with Yanukovych, 2) willingness to crack down on corruption, 3) maybe the oil crisis with Russia and the merits of their January 4 deal (though this may have only been significant to wonky types like, erhem, me).
[update: Read WRY's extremely detailed and frequent updates in the comments below for a long list of numbers updates.]
Dan McMinn
in 11) Tymoshenko - Bloc Yulia Tymoshenko, 12) Yanukovych - Party of Regions, 13) Yushchenko - Nasha Ukrayina, 17) Eastern Ukraine, 31) Mar 2006 Parl. Election
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Reader Comments (30)
As the resident election tally expert, could you please tell me what was the % breakdown between Yu and Tym in Galicia?
I gather that Tym won.
I'd also be curious to know the Tym/Yu/Ya % breakdowns in Trans-Carpathia and Bukovina. The former has some disenchanted Rusyns and the latter has a 20% ethnic Romanian population which I understand prefer Ya.
It was a close-fought contest in some areas:
Ivano-Frankivsk:
Yush: 45.7%
Tym: 29.91
Lvivsk:
Yush: 37.94%
Tym: 33.03
Ternopol:
Yush: 34.15%
Tym: 34.48% VERY close but Tym won there - all votes are in.
Transcarpathia and Bukovina didn't go "orange" nearly as strong, as you guessed.
Trans:
Yush: 25.77%
Tym: 20.27
Regions: 18.52
Chernivetsk (Bukovina)
Yush: 27.01
Tym: 30.34
Regions: 12.71
For what it is worth, the only Rusyn I personally know in Transcarpathia was an Orange supporter in the last presidential race, not sure this time.
Thanks.
Many Galicians aren't taken in by Tym which shows smarts on their part. I don't agree with the general Galician vision of Ukraine. At the same, time that view is sincere. Yulia is a tactician who uses a given ism for her own advancement as opposed to a sincere belief.
I might have more out on this shortly.
What do Rusyns do on the census? If I'm not mistaken, there' no listing for Rusyn.
Can they just not particpate in the census? is there any penalty for not participating in the census?
I'm not knowledgable about census procedures in Ukraine, but I've read somewhere that Ukraine officially denies the existence of the Rusyn language as a distinct entity - a little ironic, since the Russians have sometimes argued the same vis-a-vis Ukrainian. It's a touchy issue but I'm no linguist, so I'll leave it at that!
The Rusyns I met on a trip to Transcarpathia in the 90s seemed ambivalent about their identity. American Rusyn descendents condemned the splitting of the traditional Rusyn homeland between Slovakia and Ukraine, with Ukraine - well, the Soviet Union, really - getting their ire for that. Some locals I met said they wished they were part of Slovakia rather than Ukraine, but I was not able to explore why that was the case - the Ukrainian Transcarpathian economy was in a complete shambles.
On the other hand, some Ukrainian Rusyns I know of were clearly proud of the Orange Revolution and seem to have embraced an identity of being Ukrainian.
Incidentally, scholars say that it is possible to have more than one national identity and that it was more common in the past. We moderns think of ourselves as being this or that - you're either Russian or Ukrainian, or Mexican or American, or whatever. But it is possible to be both/and rather than either/or. I think Andew Wilson talks about that in his book on Ukraine.
The Rusyns do have their own Catholic church as distinct from the Ukrainian Catholic Church. And in Slovakia, I think they have their own 'Rusyn' schools.
Meanwhile, the Vitrkeno bloc is getting closer and closer to 3%, but I still think it won't make it.
I've been tracking that vote too, and I agree. But dang! If she HAD gotten in, the Orange-Blue difference would have been about 3.5 percent, maybe 233 seats for Orange vs. 216 for Blue (of course, I'm lumping the Commies and Vitrenko in with Regions - which is probably not totally fair to Regions, but does anyone really doubt they'd use their votes if they had a chance?)
My reputation for numbers has taken a beating, but I'll venture a guess that maybe 50,000 votes out of 25 million cast kept Vitrenko out of the Rada.
Transcarpathia is a fascinating place. You've got Hungarians there too. I think it has been part of every central European empire at one time or another. They're real nice people. One of them told me that was why they were always getting conquered by someone else!
So, if it's possible to feel simultaneously Rusyn and Ukrainian, than it's similar to one feeling both Russian and Ukrainian.
I understand that some source material states that Rusyns are a branch of (or related to) Ukrainians. This isn't much different from some of the more outdated views of Ukrainians being a branch of (or related to) Russians.
Made all the more complex when someone with a sur name like Antipov calls himself Ukrainian, while someone else with the sur name of Kravchuk calls himself Russian.
And you were right. I got carried away with my predictions by about 3%. I will mention that in the next blog entry.
Looks like the much maligned opinion polls turned out to be pretty darn accurate. I like that.
WRY, Michael: Thanks for the interesting discussion of Rusyn identity. As I said when it because a new interest of yours in your postings, I simply have too little knowledge and dedication to really delve into the issue. But it's nice to see you two talking about it.
Check this out - photos from ukrainian mp's fighting. true criminals