Ukrainian presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelensky said he is determined to create a favorable climate for foreign and domestic investments in Ukraine if elected president. “As concerns business relations, economic relations with the West, they are expecting guarantees, they believe they will have a guarantee with a new president. After all, an appropriate climate should appear for both Ukrainian investments and Western investments,” Zelensky said in an interview shown on the Ukraina television channel.
Ukraine should set up a special institution dealing with economic crimes, Zelensky said.
“The law enforcement agencies, such as the Security Service, the Prosecutor General’s Office, and the Interior Ministry, must be deprived of all functions of putting pressure on the business sector and influencing the economy,” he said.
Zelensky insisted on “relaunching” anti-corruption bodies and the Anti-Corruption Court, “because two years have passed, and promises still keep being made, but I think we will be able to do all that.”
The Central Election Commission (CEC) has received data of 99.88% of the protocols in the presidential elections of Ukraine.
Voting data are expected in Vinnytsia region (99.81% of protocols have been processed), in Kyiv region (99.36% of protocols have been processed), in Odesa region (99.31% of protocols have been processed), in Kherson region (99.87% of protocols have been processed), and in Chernivtsi region (98,23% of protocols have been processed).
Presidential candidates Volodymyr Zelensky and incumbent President Petro Poroshenko have received 30.23% and 15.95% of votes cast on March 31, respectively. Thus, they go into a second round of elections.
Some 13.39% of voters cast ballots for Batkivschyna Party leader Yulia Tymoshenko, followed by Opposition Platform – For Life candidate Yuriy Boiko with 11.67%.
Civil Position Party leader Anatoliy Hrytsenko received 6.91%, followed by ex-SBU State Security Service head Ihor Smeshko with 6.04%, Radical Party leader Oleh Liashko with 5.47%, Opposition Bloc leader Oleksandr Vilkul with 4.15%, and Svoboda Party leader Ruslan Koshulynsky with 1.62%.
Other candidates had less than 1% of the vote. Some 1.18% of ballots cast were ruled invalid.
According to the law, the presidential elections in Ukraine are held in two rounds. If in the first round on March 31 one of the candidates gets more than 50% of the votes cast, he is declared the winner. Otherwise, a second vote is held (second round), in which two candidates, who have scored the most votes in the first round, take part.
ElectraWorks Limited (Gibraltar), operating under the bwin sports betting brand, has updated odds for betting on Ukraine’s presidential election after the results of the first round of elections: odds for Volodymyr Zelensky’s victory have increased from 1.8 to 1 to 1.22 to 1. The odds of incumbent President Petro Poroshenko winning have dropped from 2.5 to 1 to 4 to 1.
The betting company Pari-Match is taking bets for Poroshenko’s victory in the second round at 3.1 to 1 odds, also making Zelensky the favorite at 1.35 to 1 odds.
Almost the same odds are given by another betting company 1Xbet: Poroshenko at 3.096 to 1, and Zelensky – 1.336 to 1.
As reported, with 98.3% of voting protocols processed, Zelensky and Poroshenko received 30.24% and 15.93% of votes, respectively.
Batkivschyna Party leader Yulia Tymoshenko received 13.39% of the votes, and Opposition Platform – For Life leader Yuriy Boiko – 11.66%.
BOOKMAKERS, ELECTRAWORKS LIMITED, ODDS, PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, ZELENSKY
Presidential candidates Volodymyr Zelensky and incumbent President Petro Poroshenko have received 30.40% and 16.03% of votes cast on March 31, respectively, according to Ukraine’s Central Election Commission (CEC) with 80.20% of voting protocols processed.
According to the CEC website, 13.24% of voters cast ballots for Batkivschyna Party leader Yulia Tymoshenko, followed by Opposition Platform – For Life candidate Yuriy Boiko – 11.55%.
Civil Position Party leader Anatoliy Hrytsenko received 7.03%, followed by ex-SBU State Security Service head Ihor Smeshko – 5.95%, Radical Party leader Oleh Liashko – 5.29%, Opposition Bloc leader Oleksandr Vilkul – 4.3% and Svoboda Party leader Ruslan Koshulynsky – 1.65%.
Some 1.18% of ballots cast were ruled invalid.
Zelensky, Poroshenko reach second round of presidential race – national exit poll
Showman Volodymyr Zelensky is the leader in the first round of the presidential election in Ukraine with 30.4% supportive votes, incumbent head of state Petro Poroshenko has 17.8% of the votes, leader of Batkivschyna Party Yulia Tymoshenko – 14.2%, according to the National exit poll.
Some 9.8% of voters backed the candidate from the Opposition Platform – For Life Yuri Boiko, 7.1% of voters cast their votes in favor of leader of Hromadianska Pozytsia (Civil Position) Party Anatoliy Hrytsenko, 6.4% – former Security Service Head Ihor Smeshko, 4.8% – leader of Radical Party Oleh Liashko, and 4.0% – candidate from the Opposition Block – the Party of Peace and Development Oleksandr Vilkul.
In the regional context, Zelensky is leading in the south of Ukraine (42.0%), 30.7% of Ukrainians in the east cast their votes in favor of Zelensky, 28.6% in the center and 21.2% in the west of the country.
Poroshenko got the most of votes in the west of Ukraine (26.0%), 19.5% in the center, 11.1% in the south and in 9.6% the east.
Tymoshenko has almost the same support in the west (17.8%) and in the center of Ukraine (17.5%), in the south she was supported by 9.5% of voters, and by 7.3% in the east.
Some 27.2% voted in favor of Boiko in the east of Ukraine, 15.2% in the south, 5.7% in the center, and 1.9% in the west.
Hrytsenko saw the greatest support in the west of the country (12.6%), 7.4% in the center, 3.3% in the south and 2.7% in the east.
The national exit poll was conducted by a consortium of Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation, Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) and the Razumkov Centre.
According to the exit poll conducted on the order of the 112 Ukraine TV Channel (112.ua) and NewsOne, showman Volodymyr Zelensky is leading in the presidential race with 30.7% of the votes, incumbent President of Ukraine gains 18.6%, while leader of the Batkivschyna party Yulia Tymoshenko has 13.9% of the vote.
According to the exit poll data as of 18:00 on Sunday, made public after the completion of voting in Ukraine, the top five candidates in terms of electoral support also included candidate from the Opposition Platform-For Life party Yuri Boiko with 10.3% of the votes, and leader of the Civil Position party Anatoliy Hrytsenko with 7.3% of the vote.
The all-Ukrainian exit poll on the order of the 112 Ukraine and NewsOne TV Channels was conducted by the Institute for Social Research and Consulting SORA (Austria) and the Ukrainian Center for Social Monitoring.
Some 26,548 people had been polled as of 18:00 on Sunday, the margin of error is no more than 2.1%.
