Election Mania

Friday was the official end of campaigning. It's illegal to campaign the day of and the day before the election. Most of the advertising was also ripped down, many billboards were covered, and there were no TV commercials.

Polls closed at 10 PM Sunday night and the first exit poll was released at 10:01. It can be read here.

You can also follow the official results at the Central Election Commission website.

Yulia Tymoshenko's party has shown a very strong following as has the Party of the Regions which was predicted. The president's party's performance is lackluster. It looks like Vitrenko is going to make it into the parliament. But no one has a majority and not even combining two parties will lead to a majority since Tymoshenko has vowed she will not join with the Regions. There are already random comments coming from various campaigns about the possibility of Our Ukraine, Tymoshenko, and the Socialists joining forces to create a new government and it looks like Yulia just might get her old job back as prime minister. Oddly, by the time most of you read this, we'll know the final results (mostly at least). It may take a while to form a new government. But Yulia had such a strong showing I think it's going to be hard to keep her out of the office of prime minister.

Now for the mayor of Kyiv. I don't know anything about that yet.

I did preach on Psalm 84 at church tonight and enjoyed that study. I was blessed by it. We have a lot of sick people now. The temps were well above freezing today