Ukraine's presidential run-off vote Sunday ended with former National Bank head Viktor Yuschenko ahead in exit polls, and with thousands of election law violations reported throughout the voting day. Yuschenko received 54 per cent of the vote and his opponent Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich 42 per cent of the popular vote, according to preliminary results released by the usually-reliable Democratic Initiatives Foundation. The survey used secret ballots, polled 30,000 respondents, and was financed by a consortium of western governments. A poll jointly published by the Kiev Monitoring Institute and Razumkov company in Kiev showed Yuschenko ahead 58 points to 39 points. An report on the Inter television station, which is highly partisan in favour of Yanukovich, showed Yuschenko ahead 49 to 45. The Ukraine's Central Election Committee (CEC) was expected to tabulate the results throughout the night. It required more than a week to count the results of the election's first round on October 31. Thousands of violations of voting law were reported by both candidates' election organizations, international observers, and local media by 3 p.m. The incidents were spread across most of the of the country's 25 provinces, and noted in both urban and rural districts. --More 2324 Local Time 2024 GMT
