December 27, 2004

Yuschenko Projected Winner in the Ukraine

Exit polls are pointing towards a victory for Viktor Yuschenko and his democratic supporters:

All three exit polls tracking Sunday's presidential rematch in Ukraine projected opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko as the winner by a large margin over Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych.

The vote is momentous for Ukraine, a nation of 48 million people caught between an eastward-expanding European Union and NATO, and an increasingly assertive Russia, its former imperial and Soviet-era master.

Opposition candidate Yushchenko, a former Central Bank chief and prime minister, wants to bring Ukraine closer to the West, while the Kremlin-backed Yanukovych, the current prime minister, emphasizes tightening the Slavic country's ties with Russia as a means to maintaining stability.

I'm still dubious about exit polling. As we saw in the U.S. election, the exit polls, which showed a substantial lead for John Kerry, didn't even come close to predicting what actually happened. The Ukraine's situation is even more complicated as its election system contained copious amounts of fraud last month, so one cannot get an accurate view of things until all the votes are counted. So far this is good news, but it isn't over yet.

Posted by 10 fingers 6 strings at December 27, 2004 04:26 AM | TrackBack
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