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I believe it's established that the eastern parts of Ukraine are more pro-Russia than the western parts. (please correct me if I misunderstood that) Does the annexation of Crimea and the potential upcoming Russian attack + occupation change the voting balance significantly? Can we realistically expect further annexation of Donetsk or other parts to result in election of Ukrainian politicians interested in bigger deals with EU or more keen on joining NATO?

Or if that's too hard to answer, a more specific version of that question: how different were past Crimea/Donetsk/Luhansk votes from the rest of the country?

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    Predicting election results in advance would be a speculative question, and a Russian invasion is still a hypothetical situation. We generally do not answer questions which ask us to speculate about future events, especially not if they are based on hypothetical scenarios. The "backup question" in the last paragraph of the question is very easy to look up online.
    – Philipp ♦
    Jan 25 at 12:05

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I'll start with your last question:

The last time there was a really close election was in 2010 which had a rather drasitc West/East division: Source: Wikipedia

With the winner being Viktor Yanukovych, the favourit candidate of the east. The election before that had similar results: Source: Wikipedia Now since then Donetzk(3-4 million inhabitants) and Crimea (~2 million) have both been annexed. Meaning the election would now most likely go the other way around now (If nothing else would have changed). Ukraine as a whole has about 40 million inhabitants, give or take.

Interestingly the winner of the 2010 election was the loser of the 2006 election, so the political alignment does change.

The other questions are somewhat difficult to answer but it I don't think that is a stretch to think that many people who were on the fence would now lean towards a more western-oriented political opinion with the Danger of them being invaded.

This change was not as drastic as one might expect it to have been. After the annexation of Crimea most ukrainians still favoured a partnership with Russia over a partnership with the EU. This has now changed to being extremely in favour of a partnership with the EU: From IRI Page 53

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  • Why do you look so closely at the 2010 election and not the 2019 election? 2010 was before Euromaidan, so it says little about Ukraine of today.
    – Philipp ♦
    Jan 25 at 12:11
  • @Philipp Because that election was so decisive that there is not a whole lot of data to go off of. Even in the first round Zelensky had close than twice the votes Poroshenko had
    – SirHawrk
    Jan 25 at 12:21
  • And you expect the next election which takes place under very similar circumstances to be different? Just because the 2010 data is more interesting to look at does not mean it is more useful.
    – Philipp ♦
    Jan 25 at 12:32
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    Poroshenko was one of if not the most hated presidents in ukrainian history, had a 'anti-rating' (== would never vote for) of over 50%, which makes this the bigger anomaly of an election compared to older elections.
    – SirHawrk
    Jan 25 at 12:37

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