The First Polls Are In… …and parties should pay attention.

There are three months (13 weeks) to go until Armenia’s next election on June 7, 2026. We are entering the critical last stages before political parties need to make their final decisions on whether they will be participating, and whether they will be teaming up with each other into electoral alliances. That deadline is April 23.

The Electoral Threshold

These decisions are important because of the minimum threshold in Armenia’s Electoral Code. A party needs to get at least 4% of the votes cast, or they will be shut out of winning any seats at all. If two or three parties come together to form an electoral alliance, the threshold for them is even higher, at 8% (up from 6% in 2021). If the alliance contains four or more parties, their threshold is a very high 10% (a new category since 2021).

Back when I was providing recommendations for changes to the Electoral Code, my focus was on unwinding its distortions from proportionality. In 2017, 143,203 people (9% of the total) voted for parties that collectively attained zero seats. In Armenia, they say that these votes “poshiatsan”, which can be literally translated as “were pulverized”. It is as if those voters never showed up at all.

In 2021, this phenomenon was even more pronounced. With 25 parties to choose from, and only three receiving any seats, 19.7% of voters chose a party that received no representation at all in parliament; one in five votes were “pulverized”. At that time, the threshold was 4% for parties and 6% for electoral alliances of multiple parties.

My recommendation was to lower the threshold for parties to 3%, but keep the alliance threshold at 6%, to provide an incentive for parties to pursue more permanent consolidation and stop using contrived alliances simply to rebrand for a single election cycle (ex. 2017 “Tsarukyan Alliance” and even 2018 “My Step Alliance”). Unfortunately, in the aftermath of the 2020 Artsakh War, there was less willingness among the ruling Civil Contract Party to unwind the distortions that their predecessors had baked in to the Electoral Code. Prior to the war, they had lowered the threshold for municipal elections from 5% and 7% for parties and alliances, respectively, to 4% and 6%. However, after the war, after 17 political parties issued their joint announcement for Pashinyan’s resignation, the Civil Contract Party used their parliamentary majority to unilaterally adopt the current formula of 4%/8%/10% for future parliamentary elections. That formula would only come into force after the 2021 election, though, so this year will be the first time that it will apply.

Seat Projections

I have seen three polls released relatively recently, asking the question “If the parliamentary election were held next Sunday, which party would you vote for?” It still floors me that, when these poll results are announced, no one else does the math required to translate them into seat projections. So I had to do it myself.

Notably, the three polls suggest drastically different outcomes.

International Republican Institute

The latest poll released is from the International Republican Institute (IRI), an American organization with unofficial ties to the U.S. Republican Party. The poll was conducted between February 3 and 13, 2026, with a sample of 1506 telephone respondents.

Table 1. Seat Projection Based on IRI Poll

If you do the required math, the poll results imply that only three parties will make it into parliament, Civil Contract will achieve exactly a two-thirds majority, with Samvel Karapetyan’s Strong Armenia Party and Gagik Tsarukyan’s Prosperous Armenia Party in opposition. Assuming that the Armenian Revolutionary Federation once again participates under the Armenia Alliance, this particular poll suggests that they will not meet the new 8% threshold and will be shut out of parliament. In total, 23% of votes cast will be “pulverized”.

EVN Report

The next poll is from the Armenian Election Study for EVN Report, where I used to work as an editor. EVN Report is a Yerevan-based online magazine. The Armenian Election Study is run by Nerses Kopalyan and Rafael Oganesyan, both from the University of Nevada Las Vegas. The poll was conducted from December 11, 2025 to February 22, 2026, with a sample size of 820 telephone respondents, of which 747 indicated that they will or may vote.

Table 2. Seat Projection Based on EVN Report Poll

The seat projections arising from this poll have a lot of similarities to what IRI found. Civil Contract comes out ahead with a governing majority, although, in this scenario, it would be characterized as a “false majority”, where they get more than 50% of the seats with less than 50% of the votes. Strong Armenia and Prosperous Armenia form the largest opposition parties, with the Armenia Alliance (again, assuming that they run as an allliance and not as a single party) missing the 8% threshold. However, the results of this poll imply that Arman Tatoyan’s Wings of Unity Party would also exceed the 4% threshold and receive 5 MPs.

MPG/Gallup Armenia

It is worth also including the latest poll from MPG, the Armenian affiliate of Gallup International (which is no longer affiliated with the US-based Gallup Inc.). This poll was conducted a bit further back, from November 7, 2025 to December 5, 2025, with a sample size of 1001 telephone respondents.

Table 3. Seat Projection Based on MPG Poll

The MPG poll implies a drastically different seat projection. Here, Civil Contract does not have a majority. The Armenia Alliance does meet the 8% threshold and actually comes out ahead of Strong Armenia. Wings of Unity does not pass the threshold, but Serzh Sargsyan’s Republican Party of Armenia does, along with two new entrants Vardan Ghukasyan’s Democracy, Law and Order (DOK) Party and Gurgen Simonyan’s Meritocratic Party of Armenia.

In this specific scenario, the two smaller parties could hold a lot of sway. Armenia Alliance, Strong Armenia, Prosperous Armenia, and the Republican Party of Armenia would come together to form a post-election coalition (which is different from a pre-election electoral alliance), but that would still only leave them with 52 out of 105 seats, just 1 short of a majority. The DOK Party is a pariah and not an attractive coalition partner (though politics makes strange bedfellows). The Meritocratic Party is anti-Russian and wants Armenia to exit the CSTO and Eurasian Economic Union, which means that it would not join a coalition with the others.

If no majority coalition can come together, there would be a second round election.

Conclusions

If you are part of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), it would be worth seriously re-evaluating whether the Armenia Alliance brand is worth keeping. The ARF is the main political party in the alliance, with the smaller Syunik-based Resurgent Armenia as a junior partner. However, it also includes many independents, including Robert Kocharyan, with whom the Armenia Alliance brand is closely associated. The ARF has not undertaken any official party primary process.

If you are reading these numbers, it would make the most sense for the members of the Armenia Alliance to form a new alliance that includes Strong Armenia and does not include Kocharyan. They will likely need to form a coalition anyway if they want to unseat Civil Contract. Joining as a pre-election alliance reduces the risk of falling into the 8% threshold trap, and might even help them nab an extra ethnic minority bonus seat (another distortion to proportionality that I advocated reforming).

Samvel Karapetyan started his political movement under the motto “Our Way”, distancing himself from the established parties. For a new alliance to work best, it would have to be seen as the current Armenia Alliance MPs moving toward Karapetyan, and not as Kocharyan announcing a partnership with him.

If such a big-tent opposition coalition were to materialize, Prosperous Armenia and the Republican Party of Armenia would also be wise to join it (though, of course, the egos of their leaders will get in the way). Prosperous Armenia seems on track to pass the 4% threshold, but a lot can happen during a campaign. In 2021, they ended up with 3.95% and thus received zero seats.

Wings of Unity should be very careful. They have announced partnerships with other small parties and movements in the last few months. However, if they participate as an electoral alliance of multiple parties, it would be very difficult to meet the higher 8% threshold. It will be important for them to structure their participation as a single political party. The Electoral Code allows up to 30% of the candidates on a party’s list to be non-members of that party (i.e. either independents, or members of another political party). Thus, if Wings of Unity registers for the election as a single party, they can still include members of their partners while still only being subject to the 4% threshold.

Aram Sargsyan’s Republic Party may once again miss the 4% threshold; they received 3.04% in 2021. They would have a lot to gain from a cooperation agreement with the Meritocratic Party, and to a lesser extent smaller players like Bright Armenia. However, once again, they would have to campaign under a single party banner instead of an official electoral alliance.