Good morning,

We are pleased to start again our live blog with the preliminary results provided by the Armenian Central Electoral Commission. The results show Civil Contract, led by Nikol Pashinyan, to have won with 53.92% of the vote, with the second president Robert Kocharyan's Armenia Alliance taking 21.04% and the party led by Artur Vanetsyan and supported by the third president, Serzh Sargsyan, taking 5.23%. No other parties qualified for parliament.

Please see here the full preliminary results:

• Fair Armenia party – 3922 votes or 0.31%
• Armenian National Congress party – 19,690 votes or 1.54%
• Civil Contract party – 687,414 or 53.92%
• Zartonk national Christian party – 4623 votes or 0.36%
• Liberty party – 1844 votes or 0.14%
• “I Have the Honor” alliance – 66,647 votes or 5.23%
• United Homeland party – 957 votes or 0.08%
• Pan-Armenian National Statehood party – 803 votes or 0.06%
• Bright Armenia party – 15,571 votes or 1.22%
• “Our Home Is Armenia” party – 12,164 votes or 0.95%
• Republic party – 38,730 votes or 3.04%
• “Hayots Hayrenik” party – 13,119 votes or 1.03%
• Free Fatherland bloc – 4136 votes or 0.32%
• Prosperous Armenia party – 50,419 votes or 3.95%
• Democratic Party of Armenia – 5021 votes or 0.39%
• 5165 National Conservative Movement party – 15,546 votes or 1.22%
• Citizen’s Decision Social-Democratic party – 3773 votes or 0.3%
• Shirinyan-Babajanyan Alliance of Democrats – 19,145 votes or 1.5%
• National Agenda party – 721 votes or 0.06%
• Verelk party – 1259 votes or 0.1%
• Liberal party – 14,935 votes or 1.17%
• European Party of Armenia – 2786 votes or 0.22%
• “Armenia” bloc – 268,300 votes or 21.04%
• National-Democratic Axis party – 18,773 votes or 1.47%
• Sovereign Armenia party – 3561 votes or 0.28%

The Armenian Central Elections Commission (CEC) has provisionally announced that 1,281,174 votes were cast in today’s elections, constituting 49.4% of those eligible. This is slightly more than the 1,260,840 (48.62%) of votes in the 2018 parliamentary election.

A more thorough breakdown is available here on the CEC website.

Reflecting on today’s vote, commonspace.eu's political editor wrote:

The voting has closed. The Armenian people have voted, and the election process appeared to be reasonably well organised and transparent. Now the counting process starts, and often it is here that problems are encountered. These elections, however, may not be conclusive. If no party wins an outright majority of more than fifty per cent, then a process of coalition building will have to start. If within six days of the publication of the official results a coalition is not formed, the election will have to be re-run in four weeks’ time with only the two largest parties on the ballot paper. Many Armenians hope to be spared this uncertainty. The next few hours will tell us what will happen. In the meantime, Armenia’s neighbours are also watching the process. What happens in this election may define the future of peace in the region.

At 20.00 (Yeveran), the polls officially close in the 20 June 2021, Armenian early parliamentary elections.

We now have the third update on voter turn-out in today's Armenian parliamentary elections. At 17.00 (Yerevan), the number of votes cast was 989,972, amounting to 38.17% of those eligible. These figures were released by the Armenian Central Elections Commission.

This announcement means that for the first time today, voter turnout is behind what it was in the last elections of 2018, where 1,025,002 voters – or 39.54% of the total number of voters – had voted at around the same time.

Track the numbers here. 

Russia's TASS news agency reports that observers from the mission of the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) have registered no serious violations during the voting at today's early Armenian parliamentary elections. The mission's co-ordinator, Igor Komarovsky, told TASS:

"[The electoral process] is proceeding quite calmly. Our mission has reported no serious flaws or violations."