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58 I Eurasia bne July 2021
Pashinyan celebrated his re-election with an evening victory rally in Yerevan's Republic Square.
Armenia's Pashinyan wins re-election in landslide
Joshua Kucera & Ani Mejlumyan for Eurasianet
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has won reelection in a landslide, gaining a renewed mandate despite leading the country to a disastrous defeat in last year’s war with Azerbaijan.
Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party won just under 54 percent of the vote in the June 20 election. The “Armenia” alliance led by former president Robert Kocharyan was a distant second at just under 21 percent.
According to an analysis of the results by elections expert Harout Manougian, Civil Contract was slated to get 71 seats in parliament, Armenia 29, and the
I Have Honor bloc seven seats. That would allow Civil Contract to maintain the decisive two-thirds majority it currently enjoys in parliament (along with other partners in a bloc called
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My Step, though that bloc is being disbanded for the next parliament).
The result was a far more decisive win than any public polls had predicted, though it did track with Civil Contract’s own internal projections. Pashinyan won in every region of the country, even the far southern district of Syunik,
Syunik village that has exemplified that instability – part of it fell under control of Azerbaijan as a result of the war – Pashinyan won 51-40 over Kocharyan.
Immediately after the first preliminary results came out past midnight, Pashinyan announced a victory rally for the evening of June 21 in Yerevan, where he promised
“I voted for Pashinyan even though I have no hopes for him. I just don’t want Kocharyan to come back”
where the government was thought to be especially vulnerable due to security concerns that have proliferated there.
Even in Shurnukh, the newly divided
a “solemn ceremony of handing over the steel mandate to the newly elected Prime Minister.” That was a reference to a campaign trope in which Pashinyan, who came to power in 2018 protests that