Turnout was strong on Sunday amid concerns of Russian meddling.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s ruling party was comfortably ahead in the country’s parliamentary election on Sunday, according to early exit poll data.
The prime minister’s Civil Contract party had 56.7 percent of the vote, with the main opposition Strong Armenia party receiving 17.5 percent according to the first exit polls after voting ended, Armenian media reported.
The parliamentary elections, the first since Armenia ceded the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan in 2023, were a high-stakes referendum between Pashinyan, who was endorsed by U.S. President Donald Trump, and his leading opponent, the Russian-Armenian oligarch Samvel Karapetyan.
“The future of Armenia will be a strategy of strengthening independence, statehood, democracy, and the rule of law,” Pashinyan told reporters outside a polling station after casting his ballot Sunday morning. “We will continue along the path of democratic reforms, of course with the support of our European partners, because the European Union is our main partner in implementing democratic reforms.”
The Central Election Commission is scheduled to announce official preliminary voting results on Monday.
The election was buffeted by concerns of Russian meddling. Armenian authorities announced on Saturday that more than 40 people had been arrested on suspicion of buying votes amid an investigation into a large-scale scheme allegedly involving Strong Armenia, according to state media.
Six of the arrest warrants were for members of Karapetyan’s party, according to media reports.
Commenting on the arrests Sunday, Karapetyan said they “would not change the minds of Armenian voters.” The Strong Armenia founder had been campaigning from his mansion after being put under house arrest last July for making “public calls to usurp power.” He has rejected the charge as politically motivated.
Karapetyan was escorted to a polling station on Sunday where he spoke briefly to the media before returning home, the Associated Press reported. “The Armenian people will make the right choice and Armenia will finally have a legitimate government,” Karapetyan said.
Voter turnout was strong at nearly 59 percent, Armenian media reported, the highest in the country’s past three elections.
Reuters reported in May that Russia was considering importing tens of thousands of Russia-based Armenians to vote in this weekend’s election in an effort to undermine the prime minister.
Pashinyan, who earned an endorsement from Trump in May, has pivoted toward the West since Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Although Armenia remains part of a single market with Russia, domestic support for Moscow nosedived after its military forces did little when Azerbaijan took control of Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023.
Pashinyan told POLITICO at the time that “the Russian peacekeepers have failed in their mission,” and has since shifted his stance toward the EU and the U.S. Yerevan suspended its military alliance with Russia in 2024; since then Pashinyan’s government has expressed its willingness to join the EU, drawing the Kremlin’s ire.