On October 25, 2015 local election was held. It became the last in the election cycle launched with early presidential election in May 2014.
As compared to the 2010 local election, the 2015 election process was distinguished for two circumstances. First – before its commencement the election legislation had been changed, the change presupposing introduction of the proportionate election system, with territorial election constituencies, for electing deputies of regional, raion (district) and city (town) councils. Second – the processes that had occurred in the country’s political environment over the last two years, had considerably changed the supply in the market of party projects. Political parties, which in total had got 40% of all representative mandates in local councils in 2010 – the Party of Regions (Partiya Rehioniv), the Communist Party of Ukraine, the Socialist Party of Ukraine, ‘Nasha Ukrayina’ (‘Our Ukraine’), ‘Front Zmin’ (‘Front of Changes’), due to different circumstances did not participate in the latest election campaign, while such political forces as the Petro Poroshenko Bloc ‘Solidarnist’ (‘Solidarity’), ‘Nash Kray’ (‘Our Land’), the ‘Opposition Bloc’, Oleh Liashko’s Radical Party, ‘UKROP’, ‘Samopomich’ Union’, which were among the top ten by the number of mandates acquired, were running in the local election for the first time.
The Monitoring-Analytical Group ‘CIFRA’ researched the latest election campaign had changed the local political landscape. On the basis of the results of election to raion (district) councils as well as monitoring of the process of raion (district) council heads election, we studied:
– which political forces and to what extent are represented in the current local councils;
– how far have local councils been reformed in terms of their members after the election;
– which political forces managed to consolidate majorities in local councils around them.
81 political parties participated in the election to 462 raion (district) councils and nominated all in all 97,102 candidates for raion (district) council deputies. As the result, 15,052 deputies from 69 parties were elected to raion (district) councils. The largest number of representation mandates went to the Petro Poroshenko Bloc ‘Solidarnist’ (‘Solidarity’) (3,228), ‘Batkivshchyna’ (‘Motherland’) (2,562), the ‘Opposition Bloc’ (1,331), Oleh Liashko’s Radical Party (1,266), the Agrarian Party of Ukraine (1,103), ‘Nash Kray’ (‘Our Land’) (914), UKROP (776), ‘Vidrodzhennia’ (‘Renaissance’) (659), ‘Svoboda’ (‘Freedom’) (634). All in all, those political parties are represented in raion (district) councils by 12,743 deputies, this making up 84.6% of the overall number of mandates.
The leader in the number of raions (districts) where the party got the highest voter support is the Petro Poroshenko Bloc ‘Solidarnist’ (173). Considerably lagging behind and following PPB are ‘Batkivshchyna’ (‘Motherland’) (63), the ‘Opposition Bloc’ (59), and the Agrarian Party of Ukraine (42).