Almost all national TV channels in Russia have already announced the victory of Victor Yanukovich in the second round of the Presidential Elections in Ukraine with reference to the outcome of various exit polls carried out by Ukrainian sociological services.

We’ll remind that by 8 p.m. of 21 November the following data were published by the National Exit Poll 2004: 54% of the interviewed voted for Victor Yushchenko while 43% of the interviewed voters voted for Victor Yanukovich; 3% of the interviewed voted against all. This is the outcome based on 2/3 of the available information.

On the other hand, the heads of the sociological services that carried out alternative exit polls, Head of Ukrainian Institute of Social Research Olexander Yaremenko and Head of `Socis` Center Mikola Churilov stated at the press conference that their exit polls failed and the outcome should not be taken into consideration. Churilov and Yaremenko mentioned such reasons of the exit poll failure as denial to communicate with the interviewers and impediments to their work.

Source: Institute of Mass Information