The 2019 parliamentary elections in Ukraine, originally scheduled to hold at the end of October 2019, has been brought forward to July 21. This follows the dissolution of the country’s parliament on the 21st of May by the newly inaugurated President Volodymyr Zelensky, following claims of a “lack of government coalition.”

The latest polls of top parties have shown that The Servant of the Nation party, chaired by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, continues to lead.  According to Ukraine’s Rating Sociological Group (RSG), the president’s party will receive 42.3 per cent of the vote, a two per cent decrease compared to the last poll. The RSG predicts that the For Life party will poll 13.4 per cent, a slight increase compared to previous polls and the European Solidarity party, headed by former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, will receive 8.3 per cent. The Voice party led by Yulia Tymoshenko, Ukraine’s former prime minister poll at 7.2 per cent of voters.

The Atlantic Council has also made a few predictions on the upcoming elections as follows;

• President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People has a legitimate chance to form a one-party majority in the parliament as Servant of the People is likely to take 130 party-list seats if its popularity continues.
• The lack of unity among the non-Zelenskyy electorate in Western Ukraine and Kyiv is likely to lead to the election of Servant of the People candidates in many of those districts.
• Holos will continue to eat away at former President Petro Poroshenko’s electorate. Holos, led by singer Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, seems to be gaining momentum and is ahead of Poroshenko’s recently rebranded European Solidarity in some polls.
• Servant of the People is not homogeneous and will eventually splinter, expect the reintroduction of the infamous imperative mandate. 

Ukraine’s Political History

The Petro Poroshenko Bloc party secured 132 seats in the 2014 parliamentary elections, making it the largest party. On the 21st of November in the same year, the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, People’s Front, Self-Reliance, Fatherland and the Radical Party all signed a coalition agreement. The Radical Party left the coalition on 1 September 2015 in protest over a vote in parliament involving a change in the Ukrainian Constitution that involved ending the war in the Donbas region of the country.

By February 2016, the Yatsenyuk cabinet had begun to shake after the economy minister Alvaras resigned from the government on claims that the administration had no “real commitment to fighting corruption.” On the 17th and 18th of February 2016, the Fatherland and Self Reliance parties exited the coalition. On April 14 of the same year, Volodymyr Groysman was confirmed by the Ukranian Parliament as the new prime minister.

The Government of Ukraine runs a semi-presidential system where the President is the head of state and the prime minister is the head of government.