What did Ukraine's voters decide after the July 2019 election?
A look back at the parliamentary vote that followed the dissolution of the Verkhovna Rada and gave President Zelensky's party a majority.
What was Ukraine absorbing on 23 July 2019? Two days after the vote, the country was taking stock of a parliamentary election that had reshaped the Verkhovna Rada.
Citizens had voted on 21 July 2019 to choose new members of the chamber. The ballot came after President Volodymyr Zelensky dissolved parliament on 21 May, during his inauguration. The election had originally been scheduled for the end of October, so the dissolution brought it forward by several months.
A clear winner
Servant of the People, the president's party, won most of the seats with a comfortable majority. Later accounts put its tally at 254 seats, an outright majority in the chamber.
Five parties and 199 single-seat winners
Five parties cleared the threshold for entering the Verkhovna Rada, as reported at the time: Servant of the People, Opposition Platform – For Life, European Solidarity, the Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party and Holos (Voice). In addition, 199 deputies were elected under the majoritarian system in single-member constituencies.
The result meant that the party of a president who had taken office only weeks earlier would hold the largest bloc in the new parliament, while four other parties would sit alongside it. The outcome of 21 July, and the figures that followed, set the starting point for the chamber that would take shape after the vote.
