Yerevan municipality elections: Pro-Pashinyan alliance leads polls with over 80%

The political bloc My Step, representing Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party and active supporters of his “Velvet Revolution”, won an overwhelming majority of votes in Sunday’s municipal elections in Yerevan.

The political team’s candidate, Hayk Marutyan, was named an absolute winner with 294,109 votes or 81.06% (according to the law on "Local Self-Government", the candidate receiving over 50% of votes is considered the elected mayor).

The Prosperous Armenia party came in the second with 25,219 votes or 6.95%.

The political alliance Luys (Light), led by Minister of Justice Artak Zeynalyan, received only 18,112 votes (4.99%), according to the Central Electoral Commission (CEC).

A total of eight political parties and four alliances ran in the snap city council elections.

The preliminary vote count suggests that only 370,323 out of the 848,343 registered voters (43.65%) cast ballots in the 475 polling stations of Yerevan.

The political alliance Yerevan Community received 2,502 votes or 0.69%. As many as 2,985 voters (0,85.85%) cast their ballots in favor of Yerevan Residents (led by Ararat Zurabyan, an opposition lawmaker). Zaruhi Postanjyan's Yerkir Tsirani (Country of Apricot) faction garnered only 5,059 votes (1.39%). The Heritage party, led by Raffi Hovhannisyan, received 2,709 votes or 0,75%. Only 1.62% of voters (5,882) gave their preference to the Armenian Revolutionary Federation-Dashnaksutyun (ARF-D). The political party Hayq (Haykazunner) secured 692 votes (0.19%). The Reformists, and the Rule of Law party received 792 votes (0.22%) and 3,948 votes (1.09%), respectively.

The former mayor, Taron Margaryan, resigned on July 9 after weeks of public discontent and protests.

Zeynalyan, whose political bloc represented the Bright Armenia and Republic partes in the elections, has already offered his congratulations to the winning candidate.