official results recorded Viktor Yushchenko with 39.87 percent and Victor Yanukovych with 39.32 percent of the votes cast. As no candidate had secured 50% or more votes required for outright victory, a run-off election was scheduled for November 21. Although a 75 percent turnout was recorded in the initial vote, observers reported many irregularities, particularly in the regions where Yushchenko's support was seen to be strongest. It was unclear how much of an impact this had on the result. A total of 28,035,184 voters participated in the first round of voting. Results of the preliminary vote were as follows: Run-off Following the November 21 run-off ballot, Ukraine's electoral commission declared Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych with 49.42% of the vote the winner with Viktor Yushchenko receiving 46.69% of the ballots cast. Observers for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said the run-off vote "did not meet international standards" and U.S. senior election observer, Senator Richard Lugar, called it a "concerted and forceful program of election day fraud". The geographic distribution of the votes showed a clear east–west division of Ukraine, which is rooted deeply in the country's history. The western and central parts roughly correspond with the former territories of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 17th century. They are considered more pro-Western, with the population mostly Ukrainian-speaking and Ukrainian Greek Catholic (Uniate) in the west or Ukrainian Orthodox in the center, and have voted predominantly for Yushchenko. The heavy-industrialized eastern part, including the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, where the links with Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church are much stronger, and which contains many ethnic Russians, is a Yanukovych stronghold. Between the two rounds of the election, dramatic increases in turnout were recorded in Yanukovych-supporting regions, while Yushchenko-supporting regions recorded the same turnout or lower than recorded in the first round. This effect was most marked in eastern Ukraine and especially in Yanukovych's stronghold of Donetsk Oblast, where a turnout of 98.5% was reportedly claimed—more than 40% up from the first round. In some districts, turnout was recorded to be more than 100%, with one district reported by observers to have recorded a 127% turnout. According to election observers and post-election investigations, pro-Yanukovych activists traveled around the country and voted many times as absentees. Some groups dependent on government assistance, such as students, hospital patients and prisoners, were told to vote for the government candidate. Many other alleged