Preliminary Vote Count for Armenia Elections Complete; Civil Contract Leads

Armenia’s Central Electoral Committee has concluded the preliminary vote count for the Parliamentary Elections on Sunday.

Shortly after the polls closed at 8 p.m. local time Sunday, the CEC reported that 1,476,597 of the 2,503,976—58.97 percent—eligible voters participated in the elections. In 2021, 49.39 percent of voters participated in the elections.

Beginning at midnight local time on Monday, the CEC began publicizing the votes—a process that lasted more than 10 hours.

In the end Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party took in 727,160 votes or 49.85 percent. In second place was the Strong Armenia Alliance, headed by businessman Samvel Karapetyan, which received 340,062 votes, or 23.31 percent. The Armenia Alliance, headed by former president Robert Kocharian, received 145,097 votes or 9.95 percent of the votes, while businessman Gagik Tsarukyan’s Prosperous Armenia Party received 58,368 votes or four percent.

These four parties will be represented in Armenia’s next parliament with Civil Contract receiving 61 seats, the Strong Armenia Alliance getting 28, while the Armenian Alliance and Prosperous Armenia Party will have 11 and 5 seats respectively.

The CEC had announced the voting results from 477, out of the 2005 precincts, when Pashinyan, at around 2 a.m. local time on Monday called a press conference to claim victory for his Civil Contract party mere two hours after the vote counting process had begun.

He told reporters that the Civil Contract party won the elections, and the Civil Contract party alone will form a government.

“I want to emphasize that compared to the 2021 elections, the Civil Contract party received the vote of a higher number of citizens of the Republic of Armenia—a vote of confidence of a larger number of citizens,” said Pashinyan.

“This is a historic victory that will definitely ensure the continuity and development of the Republic of Armenia, and, of course, we will have lasting and institutional peace,” he added.

Pashinyan’s hasty press conference angered opposition leaders, who hit back by accusing the prime minister of exerting undue pressure on the CEC and its workers.

Armenia Alliance member and chair of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation Supreme Council of Armenia, Ishkhan Saghatelyan wrote in a Facebook post that Pashinyan’s premature declaration of victory was “an effort to exert pressure on the CEC and usurp power.”

Calling Pashinyan’s statement a legal violation, the leader of the Wings of Unity Party, Armenia’s former human rights defender Arman Tatoyan, condemned the move.

“Nikol Pashinyan’s statement that the Civil Contract Party will form a government on its own and has won the elections is unconstitutional and exceeds the powers of the Prime Minister. The head of government has no authority to make a statement and announce his sole victory when a little more than 10 percent of the vote results have been calculated, when not even 10 percent of the vote results in Yerevan have been tallied,” Tatoyan said.

Armenia’s former Ambassador at large and head of the Bright Armenia party, Edmon Marukyan also chastised Pashinyan for his premature victory claim.

“Without any data, He is saying ‘I won.’ This is a violation of all the norms of electoral laws, all of them,” Marukyan said.

At his press conference, Pashinyan was asked about his hasty announcement. He told reporters that his party had representatives at every precinct and “we are doing our own calculations.”