For Ukraine, 2019 was a year of elections – first the presidential election on March 31 and then the parliamentary elections less than four months later, on July 21. The presidential election brought a political neophyte to power in a landslide victory, while the Rada elections redrew Ukraine’s political map as newly elected President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s political party, Servant of the People, won 254 seats out of the 424 being contested.
At the beginning of the year, analysts said that the presidential race was wide open and unpredictable. National Deputy and two-time Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko was the front runner, followed by incumbent President Petro Poroshenko and Mr. Zelenskyy, a showman and perhaps the country’s most popular comedian. None of the three approached the popularity among voters needed to win a simple majority. This, coupled with the fact that one-fifth of voters were still undecided made it difficult to foresee who the two final candidates would be for the likely runoff vote in April.