08.09 Acting Moscow Mayor Wins Vote, Navalny Comes 2nd, Urges Runoff - Polls
MOSCOW, September 8 (RIA Novosti) Acting Moscow head Sergei Sobyanin predictably won Sundays mayoral election in the Russian capital, but his main rival, opposition leader Alexei Navalny, came second with an unexpected third of the vote, according to exit polls. A preliminary vote count, however, gave Navalny almost 26 percent.
VTsIOM, a state run pollster, said late Sunday that Sobyanin got 53 percent of the vote, while Navalny received 32 percent. A Communist Party candidate came third with 8 percent. The poll was commissioned by RIA Novosti and involved 26,574 voters at 200 polling stations.
Navalnys election campaign cried foul, claiming that its polls gave Sobyanin only 46 percent a figure that suggests a second round while Navalny got 35.6 percent.
The exit polls undoubtedly show that there will be a second round, Navalny told journalists after announcing the results, according to video posted online by his campaign. We call on Moscow city hall not to take any steps and falsify the results. We understand very well that they are tempted to add another eight or nine percent of the vote and make it look like a first-round victory.
