ASTANA – Nursultan Nazarbayev won re-election with a landslide win of 97.5%, the exit poll conducted by the Institute of Democracy showed.
Institute director Yulia Kuchinskaya made the announcement during a midnight briefing on April 27 televised live on Khabar TV.
According to the exit poll, the other two candidates – Turgun Syzdykov of the Communist People’s Party Abelgazy Kussainov, a self-nominee and Chairman of the Federation of Trade Unions, received 1.87% and 0.63% respectively.
The exit poll took place at more than 550 polling stations across the country, including 312 stations in cities and 238 stations in rural areas and sought to be demographically and geographically representative. More than 1,500 people conducted the surveying.
Kazakhstan’s electoral law explicitly prohibits announcing exit poll data on the day of election even when the polling stations shut down across the country.
A record 95.11 percent of registered voters had cast their ballots on the day of election, Secretary of the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) Bakhyt Meldeshov announced shortly after the voting ended.
