Who will win the Ukrainian Presidential run-off election on 7 February 2010?

Prediction market was closed one week in advance to the run-off voting to avoid influences of last-week polling results. Payoffs will be circa 8 Feb 2010.

The choice for Ukrainians: A rock or a hard place
Kiev Post 3 Feb 2010 at 12:19 | Will Ritter
http://www.kyivpost.com/news/opinion/op_ed/detail/58535/print/
The “against all” option on Ukrainian ballots (literally, “I do not support any candidate”) is a relic of the Soviet system. In Parliamentary elections and the first round of presidential elections, the “against all” option is little more than a curiosity; if two or three, or even ten percent vote “against all”, this has practically no effect on the ultimate result of the vote.
However, in a second round, winner-take-all presidential contest pitting two candidates head-to-head, the existence of “against all” drastically changes the dynamic of the process. There is a very real potential that a relatively small number of disenchanted voters may, paradoxically, directly affect the result of the election by their refusal to support a candidate.

Poll: Majority of Ukrainians skeptical about fairness of second round of elections
3 Feb 2010 at 16:27 | Interfax-Ukraine http://www.kyivpost.com/news/politics/detail/58571/
More than half of Ukrainians do not believe that the second round of the presidential elections will be fair and that its results will not be rigged, a poll of 2,004 respondents conducted by the Social and Political Psychology Institute within the Ukrainian Academy of Pedagogical Sciences has found.
Only 6.8% of the respondents are absolutely sure that the second round will pass fairly and its results will not be rigged, another 20.5% are rather confident of this, and 19.2% are undecided.
Among Prime Minister and presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko’s supporters, 57.9% are unsure about the fair organization of the second round, and among Party of Regions of Ukraine leader Viktor Yanukovych’s supporters there are 41.5% of such people.
As many as 62.5% of those polled believe that the official results of the first round of the elections announced by the Central Elections Commission correctly reflect the people’s preferences, while 16.4% hold the opposite view, and 21.1% could not determine their position.
At the same time, 23.1% of Tymoshenko’s supporters called into question the official results of the first round, while only 4.9% of Yanukovych’s supporters did the same.
Asked about violations of the election laws during the first round of the elections, 13.3% of those polled said there were such violations that significantly distorted the voting results. At the same time, 41.9% are of the view that, while there were minor abuses, they did not significantly change the real voting results; 24.1% believe that there were virtually no violations during the first round, and 20.7% were undecided.
The share of those insisting that the result of the first round of the elections was significantly distorted is higher among Tymoshenko’s supporters (21.1) than among Yanukovych’s (6.2).
As many as 11.6% of the respondents said they were prepared to join mass protests against vote rigging in the presidential elections, which is 3% less than was recorded in December 2009. In particular, 10.8% of Yanukovych’s and 16.9% of Tymoshenko’s supporters are ready for active protests.

Update: With 98.7% of ballots counted, gap between Yanukovych and Tymoshenko is 2.86%
08 Feb 2010 KievPost at 17:04 | Interfax-Ukraine http://www.kyivpost.com/news/politics/detail/59032/print/
With 98.7% of the ballots in the Ukrainian presidential run-off counted, Regions Party leader Viktor Yanukovych has garnered 48.64% of the vote, while his bitter rival Yulia Tymoshenko had 45.78, the press center of the Ukrainian Central Election Commission (CEC) has reported.
A total of 4.38 supported neither of the candidates.
The gap between Yanukovych and Tymoshenko now stands at 2.86.
A total of 99.11 of ballots were counted in the overseas electoral district. According to this data, Tymoshenko won 60.04, while Yanukovych collected 34.46. A total of 4.62% voted against both candidates.
All of the election returns from 12 regions, Kyiv and Sevastopol have been sent to the CEC.
The lowest number of protocols on the returns were received from Crimea (81) and Luhansk region (94,60).
The voter turnout on February 7 was 69.07%

21:56 GMT, Monday, 8 February 2010
Decision time for Ukraine’s Tymoshenko
By Richard Galpin
BBC News, Kiev
But the odds are now stacked against Mrs Tymoshenko.
Not only has the Election Commission confirmed Mr Yanukovych’s victory, she is also being chided by the international community.
At a news conference in Kiev on Monday, a team of election observers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe was blunt in its assessment of Ukraine’s post-election landscape.
“Yesterday’s vote was an impressive display of democratic elections. For everyone in Ukraine, this election was a victory,” said Joao Soares, the team co-ordinator.
“It is now time for the country’s political leaders to listen to the people’s verdict and make sure that the transition of power is peaceful and constructive.”
Those two sentences alone may have been enough to cut the ground from underneath Mrs Tymoshenko’s feet.

Yanukovych Win Looks Sealed in Ukraine
‎44 minutes ago‎ – Wall Street Journal
Yanukovych Wins Ukraine’s Presidential Election
‎21 hours ago‎ – BusinessWeek
Western monitors press Tymoshenko to concede defeat
Reuters – Matt Robinson – ‎11 hours ago‎
Ukraine’s Yulia Tymoshenko under pressure to concede in presidential race
Los Angeles Times – Megan K. Stack – ‎7 hours ago‎