A large chunk of the 37 million voters, fed up with economic hardship,
had
been widely expected to vote for the left in a show of no-confidence
in
President Leonid Kuchma's policies. Iko Kucheriv, head of the Democratic
Initiative Group, a thinktank, told Channel 1+1 early today that the
Communists were leading in several central and southern regions in
the exit
polls carried out among 10,000 voters across Ukraine.
The polls also said the main nationalist Rukh Party had 11 percent of
the
vote, the Green Party 6 percent, and 5 percent each for the pro-government
People's Democratic Party and the centrist Social Democratic Party."
This was taken from the Montreal Gazette (March 30, 1998).