Armenia 2013: Precincts With and Without Observers
Where civic observers watched the vote, Raffi Hovannisian won with 53.4%; in the rest of the country Serzh Sargsyan had 58.6%.
Original page on electionscount.info: Results in precincts monitored by observers and without observers, 2013Armenia elected its president on 18 February 2013. Seven candidates stood; the incumbent Serzh Sargsyan (Republican Party) was declared the winner in the first round, and Raffi Hovannisian (Heritage) came second. The monitoring site for this election is at elections.transparency.am/2013.
In 2013 a civic “public control” mission placed its own observers in 169 precincts in Yerevan, Shirak, Lori, Tavush and Ararat. The page “Results in precincts monitored by observers and without observers” compares those precincts with the rest of the country and, province by province, with their neighbours. It links to separate pages for Yerevan, Shirak, Lori, Tavush and Ararat.
How to read this chart
Three panels: left, the 169 observed precincts; middle, all other precincts of the republic; right, the other precincts in the same regions. Bars: blue participants, red Sargsyan, purple Hovannisian, all as % of voters. The labels give the numbers and the shares of participants and of voters.
What it shows
- Observed: 263,672 voters, 144,674 participants (54.9%). Sargsyan 55,028 votes, 38.04% of participants; Hovannisian 77,194, 53.36%.
- All others: 2,264,150 voters, 1,376,587 participants (60.8%). Sargsyan 58.56%, Hovannisian 33.6%.
- Others in the same regions: 1,078,175 voters, 655,541 participants (60.8%). Sargsyan 58.52%, Hovannisian 32.06%.
Where independent observers were present, Hovannisian won with 53%; in the same regions without them, Sargsyan won with 58.5%. Turnout was six points lower in the observed precincts.
A note on the chart: the left panel gives Sargsyan’s share of voters as 22.37%; 55,028 votes out of 263,672 voters is 20.87%. The bar itself is drawn at about 21%.
Province by province
How to read this chart
Top: all of Yerevan. Bottom left: the 36 precincts with public-control observers; bottom right: the other 433. Same bars and labels as above.
What it shows
Observed: turnout 53.4%, Hovannisian 45.6%, Sargsyan 41.93%. Not observed: turnout 54.1%, Sargsyan 47.12%, Hovannisian 40.23%. In the capital the gap is about five points each way.
How to read this chart
Top: all 219 precincts of Shirak. Bottom: 81 observed and 138 not observed. Percentages in brackets with “-ը” are shares of voters.
What it shows
The largest difference of all. Observed: turnout 50.7%, Hovannisian 66.56%, Sargsyan 25.75%. Not observed: turnout 66.8%, Sargsyan 58.25%, Hovannisian 36.68%. Sargsyan received 16,405 votes in the observed precincts, which had 125,640 voters, and 40,324 in the unobserved ones, which had only 103,625.
In the same province, precincts without observers had 16 points higher turnout and gave the incumbent more than twice his share in observed precincts.
How to read this chart
Top: all 221 precincts of Lori. Bottom: 34 observed and 187 not observed.
What it shows
Observed: turnout 61.6%, Sargsyan 49.92%, Hovannisian 42.39%. Not observed: turnout 60.0%, Sargsyan 55.49%, Hovannisian 37.55%. Here turnout was the same and the gap is about five points.
A note on the chart: the top panel gives Hovannisian “181027 votes 40,61% (21,95%)”, which are Yerevan’s figures. From the two lower panels, Lori’s total is 13,482 + 41,869 = 55,351 votes, 38.6% of participants and 23.3% of voters.
How to read this chart
Top: all 96 precincts of Tavush. Bottom: the observed precincts of district 8 and the 88 without observers. The page also shows each observed precinct separately.
What it shows
Observed: turnout 67.0%, Hovannisian 46.51%, Sargsyan 46.2%, a tie. Not observed: turnout 65.5%, Sargsyan 53.46%, Hovannisian 38.75%. Among the observed precincts, 40/36 with 370 voters stands out: about 85% turnout, with Sargsyan’s votes equal to about 75% of all its voters.
How to read this chart
Top: the 10 observed precincts, in total and one by one. Middle: four precincts where the observers were expelled. Bottom: precincts without observers, in total and one by one. Blue participants, red Sargsyan, purple Hovannisian, % of voters; the figure under each precinct number is its voters.
What it shows
- Observed: turnout 63.2%, Sargsyan 61.26%, Hovannisian 32.89% of participants.
- Observers expelled (17/2, 17/5, 17/10, 17/11): turnout 81.8%, Sargsyan 80.71%, Hovannisian 15.27%.
- Without observers: turnout 75.7%, Sargsyan 78.92%, Hovannisian 17.94%.
Once the observers were removed, the four precincts reported turnout 19 points higher and a Sargsyan share 19 points higher than the precincts where observers stayed.
All five areas together
How to read this chart
Left: Sargsyan’s share of participants; right: Hovannisian’s. In each pair the green bar is the observed precincts and the grey bar the unobserved precincts of the same area; the numbers under the area are the precincts in each group.
What it shows
In every one of the five areas Sargsyan did worse and Hovannisian better where observers were present. The gap ranges from about five points (Yerevan, Lori) to 32 points (Shirak).
The observers were placed in precincts chosen by the mission, not at random, so part of the difference may come from where they went. But an effect in the same direction in every province, and the jump at the four precincts where observers were expelled, point to what happened where nobody was watching.
Related: Yerevan by district; signs of ballot stuffing.
Data and sources on this site
From the book
This article is based on Chapter VI of Electoral Rights and Election Falsification by Lyudvig Khachatryan, which explains the full method, the formulas and the cases behind it.