Azerbaijan’s ruling party on course for one-seat majority in election, says exit poll

BAKU: Azerbaijan’s ruling party was on course for a single-seat majority on Sunday in a snap parliamentary election called by President Ilham Aliyev, according to an exit poll.

The poll, conducted by Oracle Advisory Group, said Aliyev’s New Azerbaijan party was set to win 63 out of 125 seats, down from 69 in the outgoing parliament.

Despite the forecast decline in seats, the president’s supporters were still set to dominate the new legislature.

Dozens of other seats were set to go to candidates who are nominally independent of political parties but in practice back the government, and to minor pro-government parties.

It was the first parliamentary election since Azerbaijan staged a lightning offensive a year ago to recapture the breakaway territory of Karabakh, where ethnic Armenians had enjoyed de facto independence for three decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Aliyev, in power since 2003, moved swiftly to capitalise on that victory and won a fifth presidential term in February with more than 92% of the vote, according to election authorities.

Armenia accused Baku of ethnic cleansing in Karabakh after almost all of its more than 100,000 ethnic Armenian residents fled the area.

Azerbaijan denied that charge. It is rebuilding the region and resettling it with Azerbaijanis who fled during a war with Armenia in the 1990s.