2012 Parliamentary Election Results
In August 2011 Strong Ukraine and People's Party announced that both will merge with Party of Regions. The merge between People's Party and Party of Regions did not materialize. Strong Ukraine and Party of Regions merged on 17 March 2012. (Former) Strong Ukraine leader Serhiy Tyhypko was unanimously elected Party of Regions deputy chairman and member of the Party of Regions political council the same day. Party of Regions parliamentarian Olena Bondarenko had stated (early March 2012) the two parties and "another party" would merge on 17 March 2012. No additional third party merged with Party of Regions on 17 March 2012; according to Ukrainian media Tyhypko had personally prevented an merger of United Centre with Party of Regions in March 2012.
Late 2011 the parties popularity dropped in opinion polls below 20%; mainly because the party was losing votes to the Communist Party of Ukraine.
In April 2012, the top PR consultancy Burson-Marsteller was hired to represent the interests of the Party of Regions, "to help them communicate its activities as the governing party of Ukraine, as well as to help it explain better its position on the Yulia Tymoshenko case", as explained by Robert Mack, a senior manager at Burson-Marsteller.
In the October 2012 parliamentary elections the party won 72 seats and 30% of the votes under the proportional party-list system (falling from 34% in 2007 and 32% in 2006) and another 115 by winning 115 simple-majority constituencies (this sum gave them a total of 187 seats and 41,56% of the 450 seats in the Ukrainian Parliament). The party lost about 2 million voters compared with the previous election.
Read more about this topic: Party Of Regions, History, Yanukovych Presidency
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