Ukraine Elections: Who Kharkov Voted For

During last weekend's parliamentary election, Victor Yanukovich's Party of Regions won the majority of votes in Kharkiv -- a little more than 51 percent, according to The Central Election Commission (the website offers English or Ukrainian webpages, but not those in Russian, which earlier this month was made the official second language in Kharkov Oblast).

Overall, Yanukovich got 32 percent of the vote, including roughly three-quarters of the vote in Lugansk and Donetsk, the two most eastern of Ukraine's regions. Yanukovich's party was followed by the Yulia Timoshenko Bloc (22 percent, 12 in Kharkov) and Victor Yushennko's Our Ukraine party (14, 5 percent in Kharkov).

The Communists, fifth nationwide, came in fourth in Kharkov, with 4.56 percent of the vote. The Socialists, who sell themselves as Swedish socialists, placed fourth nationwide with almost six percent of the vote, but were only the seventh most popular party in Kharkov. Suppose this is no town for Swedes.

The Green Party didn't even get one percent of the vote north of Kiev, in the region that includes Chornobyl. But maybe that speaks more for the need for coalition than anything else. There were 45 parties on the ballot, including three other environmental parties and The Party of Putin's Politics, the last of which got .12 percent of the vote (those voters, I suspect, who don't think Yanukovich leans toward Moscow quite enough -- voters who'd rather just jump right into President Putin's lap).

Almost two percent of voters took advantage of a box that allows people to "vote against all."