Five Armenian Parties Pass Parliamentary Threshold – Exit Poll
By Ria Novosti
Five Armenian parties will pass the parliamentary threshold, according to results of an exit poll by the Gallup International Association.
Eight parties and one party alliance are participating in the elections. Parliamentary threshold is five percent for a party and seven percent for a bloc.
According to 20:00 local time [18:00 GMT] exit poll results, the Republican Party of President Serzh Sargsyan and the Prosperous Armenia party, both in the governing coalition, are clear leaders with 43.3 percent and 29.3 percent, respectively. Centrist Orinats Erkir (Rule of Law), the third party in the ruling coalition, is to get about 6.2 percent.
Other parties that are likely to succeed in the polls are the opposition Heritage party with 6.5 percent and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation with 5.2 percent.
It is unclear whether the main opposition force, the Armenian National Congress of ex-President Levon Ter-Petrosyan, will pass the parliamentary threshold. Exit polls give the bloc 6.4 percent, which is below the required threshold of seven percent.
Vote count is currently underway and results only from 35 polling stations are available so far. According to the early results, the Republican Party gets 71.8 percent and Prosperous Armenia – 13.21 percent. The Armenian Revolutionary Federation is third with 7.77 percent. Other parties got less than 3 percent.
According to the Central Election Commission results, more than 1.5 million, or 62.33 percent of almost 2.5 million eligible voters cast their ballot in Sunday’s polls.
The voting was monitored by more than 31,000 domestic observers and 647 international monitors.
The Armenian police said it received 62 reports about possible election violations; all of them are being probed and three criminal cases have already been launched. Police also investigates 43 reports in internet and media about suspected violations.
Preliminary results are expected within 24 hours after the vote, while final results are due in one week.
