Azernews.Az

By Aynur Jafarova

The Central Election Commission of Azerbaijan (CEC) announced the initial results from all 5,492 polling stations of 125 constituencies on October 10.

The October 9 presidential election has ended in Azerbaijan with a decisive victory of incumbent President Ilham Aliyev, who was nominated by the ruling New Azerbaijan Party.

According to the results of the vote made after processing the ballot papers from all polling stations, Ilham Aliyev won the elections with 84.55 percent of votes (3,126,612 voters).

The number of eligible voters in the country was nearly 5,145,000. The voting was conducted in 5,492 polling stations. Thirty-eight polling stations were set up abroad.

Results of exit-polls held by international, as well as local organizations testified for the legitimacy of the presidential elections in Azerbaijan.

Exit poll conducted by the French OpinionWay Research Institute revealed that Ilham Aliyev took the victory, gaining a major 82.8 percent of votes.

The institute conducted an exit-poll in 99 polling stations of 64 constituencies. Some 1,000 people who voted in these polling stations filled the questionnaire and cast it in a transparent box. The anonymity of the exit-poll respondents was ensured.

The results of the exit-poll conducted by the NGO Cooperation Alliance in 939 polling stations in 125 constituencies also indicated that nearly 84 percent of entire votes given to incumbent President Ilham Aliyev.

The poll held by U.S. Arthur J. Finkelstein & Associates (AJF) among 60,000 responders also saw the incumbent President Ilham Aliyev winning 82.7 percent of votes.

The similar results were fixed in the results of exit-polls conducted by local West-Resource public association for support of development of civil society, ELS Independent Research Center as well as REY Monitoring Centre, who concluded the victory of Ilham Aliyev by gaining the majority of votes.

The presidential elections in Azerbaijan was on focus of leading media outlets of the world, including the Turkish TV channel TRT Haber, Euronews TV channel, Russia's ITAR-TASS and RIA Novosti news agencies, as well as Reuters.