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Can Poroshenko close the gap before the runoff?
Summary
A look back at the position of Ukraine's presidential race after the first round, as it stood on 4 April 2019.
What did the first round of Ukraine's presidential election leave open on 4 April 2019? A runoff, and a wide gap between the two candidates heading into it.
According to figures reported on 3 April 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky won the first round with 30 percent of the vote. President Petro Poroshenko came second with 15 percent, half the leader's share. Turnout was 63 percent.
Why a second round was needed
No candidate reached the required number of votes to win the presidency outright, so the two leading candidates were set to meet in a runoff on 21 April. The background to the vote shows how crowded the field was: the first round had been held on 31 March 2019, with 39 candidates on the ballot. In a field that large, the top two finishers took the runoff places, and the incumbent's 15 percent was the lower of the two shares.
What the numbers implied on 4 April
The first-round result gave Zelensky, described in the background as a television personality, a clear lead. For Poroshenko, the task over the following 17 days was to win over voters who had backed other candidates, since the first-round figures alone left him well behind.
The outcome came later. On 21 April 2019, the Central Election Commission announced that Zelensky had won the second round with 73.22 percent of the vote. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe recognised the elections as free and fair.
