What did Ukraine's snap election deliver for Zelensky?

What did Ukraine's early parliamentary election actually produce? By 23 July 2019, two days after the vote on 21 July, the answer was clear: a comfortable majority for the party of President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Ukrainian citizens had voted for new members of the Verkhovna Rada after Zelensky dissolved the previous parliament in May. As background to the vote, the election had originally been scheduled for the end of October and was brought forward after he dissolved parliament on 21 May 2019, during his inauguration.

Five parties clear the threshold

As reported at the time, five political parties won seats through the party-list vote: Servant of the People, Opposition Platform – For Life, European Solidarity, the Batkivshchyna party and Holos. In addition, 199 deputies were elected under the majoritarian system in single-member constituencies.

Servant of the People, the president's party, won most of the seats and a comfortable majority. Later tallies, drawn from subsequent accounts of the election, put its total at 254 seats, an outright majority.

What the result meant

The outcome gave the president's party a majority in the chamber that had been elected after he called the early vote. Beyond the seat counts and the five parties that entered parliament, the reports from 21 July 2019 set out the basic shape of the new Rada: one dominant party, four others in the chamber, and a large bloc of constituency deputies.