Ukrainian Elections
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Every Ukrainian national election since independence: seven presidential races and eight Rada contests — the independence-day vote of 1991, the falsified runoff that sparked the Orange Revolution, the wartime ballots of 2014 and 2019, and the Zelenskyy landslide. Elections are suspended under martial law until the war ends.
Elections suspended. Ukraine has held no national election since 2019: the constitution bars elections under martial law, in force since Russia's full-scale invasion of February 2022. This is a democracy's wartime pause, not a closure — every completed election here was competitive, and three sitting presidents have lost at the ballot box, a post-Soviet record. The next vote awaits the end of martial law.
Presidential elections
7
1991–2019, every one competitive
Rada elections
8
1994–2019, majoritarian to full party-list and back to mixed
Incumbents defeated
3
Kravchuk, Yushchenko, Poroshenko — only Kuchma won re-election
Revolutions forced by fraud
1
the Orange Revolution of 2004 — a falsified runoff, annulled and re-run
Presidential races
All 7 contests, newest first — every one of them a real race, and most of them decided in a runoff between east and west.
Elections at war · 2014–2019
Both post-Maidan presidential elections were held with Crimea annexed and a war burning in the Donbas. Petro Poroshenko won outright in 2014; five years later voters replaced him with a television comedian in the largest landslide in Ukrainian history. The next election awaits the end of martial law.
The Orange decade · 2004–2010
The falsified runoff of November 2004 brought a million people onto the Maidan, and the re-run it forced put Viktor Yushchenko in office. Six years later his rival Viktor Yanukovych won the rematch cleanly — the revolution's promise unfulfilled, but the habit of real elections intact.
The founding elections · 1991–1999
Ukraine elected its first president on the same day it voted for independence, 1 December 1991. The Kravchuk and Kuchma years established the pattern of fiercely contested two-round races decided between east and west — and of incumbents losing, which has happened more often in Ukraine than almost anywhere in the post-Soviet world.
Rada elections
Every Verkhovna Rada election, newest first — from the fragmented majoritarian chambers of the 1990s through the Orange-era party-list duels to the wartime Rada of 2019, elected without Crimea and the occupied Donbas.
The wartime Rada · 2014–2019
The post-Maidan parliaments were elected without Crimea and much of the Donbas. In 2019 Volodymyr Zelenskyy's brand-new Servant of the People party won the first single-party majority in Ukraine's independent history. The Rada elected in 2019 continues to sit under martial law.
Orange and blue · 2006–2012
Full proportional voting from 2006 turned Rada elections into national duels between the Orange camp and Yanukovych's Party of Regions — including the 2007 snap election that briefly returned Yulia Tymoshenko to the premiership, and the tilted 2012 vote held with her in prison.
The post-Soviet Rada · 1994–2002
The first Verkhovna Rada elections ran on majoritarian and then mixed rules, producing fragmented parliaments where independents and the revived Communist Party loomed large and governments were made in the corridors rather than at the ballot box.
The long arc in charts
Hover any point for the exact figure.
Turnout, 1991–2019
From 84% on independence day to 49% in the 2019 Rada election — a familiar democratic slide, steepened after 2014 by the loss of voters in Crimea and the occupied Donbas.
The east–west map that decided everything
For two decades every close race split along the same line: the west and centre against the south and east. The runoffs of 1994, 2004 and 2010 were all decided by a few points across that divide. 2019 broke the pattern — Zelenskyy carried every region but one, the first truly national mandate in Ukraine's history.
The numbers to know
Biggest landslide
74.96%
Zelenskyy over Poroshenko in the 2019 runoff — the largest margin in Ukrainian history
Incumbent presidents defeated
3
Kravchuk 1994, Yushchenko 2010, Poroshenko 2019 — only Kuchma ever won re-election
The revolution's election
2004
the falsified runoff, the Orange Revolution, and the court-ordered re-run Yushchenko won
Only single-party majority
254
Servant of the People's 2019 sweep — the first outright Rada majority since independence
Highest turnout
84.18%
the December 1991 presidential vote, held the same day as the independence referendum
Wartime ballots
4
the presidential and Rada votes of 2014 and 2019, all held with the Donbas at war
How Ukrainian elections work
The presidency
Directly elected for five years in a two-round system: an absolute majority in the first round or a runoff between the top two. Since 1991 only the 1991 and 2014 races have been settled in one round.
The Verkhovna Rada
450 seats, one chamber. The rules have swung between pure majoritarian (1994), mixed (1998–2002, 2012–2019) and full party-list PR (2006–2007), with a 5% threshold — and 26 seats representing occupied territory have sat empty since 2014.
Martial law and the pause
The constitution forbids national elections under martial law, continuously in force since 24 February 2022. Zelenskyy's five-year term has been extended by that provision, a suspension accepted by parliament and opposition alike; a post-war election will follow the lifting of martial law.
Why the record matters
Ukraine is the post-Soviet state where elections stayed real: incumbents lose, courts have annulled a stolen runoff, and power has changed hands peacefully in every decade — the habit Russia's invasion was in part meant to extinguish.