Armenia Elections

Staff Report

Armenia’s Central Election Commission published the final official results of the February 19 presidential election which show President Robert Kocharian failing to win an outright victory.

According to the official figures, Kocharian garnered 49.5 percent of some 1.4 million votes. This is 0.3 percent less than the preliminary figure cited by the CEC on February 20. The threshold for a first-round win is 50 percent plus one vote.

Kocharian’s main challengers, Stepan Demirchian and Artashes Geghamian, remained in second and third places with 28.2 percent and 17.6 percent of the vote respectively. Another opposition candidate, Aram Karapetian, came in a distant fourth with about 3 percent. Veteran opposition politician Vazgen Manukian, who nearly became Armenia’s president in 1996, received less than one percent.

An election runoff between President Kocharian and second place finisher Demirchian will take place on Wednesday, March 5.