Ukraine 2010: Were Tymoshenko's Cries of Fraud Anything More Than Smoke?

Abstract

What evidence is there that Ukraine has made a successful transition to a competitive political system embodying free and fair elections? Several indicators of fraud developed and used previously to assess elections elsewhere are applied to official precinct-level returns of Ukraine's 2010 presidential contest. Asking if either candidate benefitted from any significant number of suspicious votes or final tallies, the findings are compared to the third round of Ukraine's 2004 presidential vote to assess the free and fair nature of Viktor Yanukovich's 2010 victory over Yulia Tymoshenko. The analysis illustrates how elections can be studied to seek objective assessment of a state's democratic legitimacy.