2014 Donbas general elections

Three candidates vied for the position of DPR chief. These were Aleksandr Zakharchenko, Yuri Sivokonenko, and Aleksandr Kofman. Two political parties contested seats in the parliamentary elections: Donetsk Republic and Free Donbas. Whilst the Communist Party of the Donetsk People's Republic had planned to participate in the elections, it was not allowed to participate because it "made too many mistakes in its submitted documents".[12] It endorsed Aleksandr Zakharchenko.[13] Pavel Gubarev and his New Russia Party, along with other parties, were banned from participating because they "were not able to hold a founding conference", had "purported errors in their documents", or had "not notified the central election commission of the conference at which the party had been founded".[14][15]

DPR chief candidate and incumbent DPR prime minister Aleksandr Zakharchenko's election promises were described by the Financial Times as "a list of mandates and promises that ran the gamut from somewhat realistic to well outside the realm of possibility".[16] During campaign rallies, he told potential voters that he wanted pensions to be "higher than in Poland", and that pensioners should have enough money to "travel to Australia at least once a year to shoot a dozen kangaroos on Safari".[9] Zakharchenko promised to build "a normal state, a good one, a just one. Our boys died for this, civilians are still being killed for this until now".[9] Zakharchenko also vowed that production would soon restart at businesses closed by the war, that there would be a ten percent discount on certain groceries, that salaries would be immediately distributed to the city's doctors and nurses, and that pensioners would soon receive the pensions that had been unpaid since the start of the war.[16] During a campaign rally, he said "These are historical times. We are creating a new country! It's an insane goal", and that "We're like the United Arab Emirates. Our region is very rich. We have coal, metallurgy, natural gas...the difference between us and the Emirates is they don't have a war there and we do".[16] During campaign events, Zakharchenko carefully recorded the names of all those who appealed to him for help with some problem, and then summoned "one of a dozen aides who he promised would swiftly deal" with these problems.[16]

Across DPR territory, billboards were plastered with messages in support of Zakharchenko.[8] Posters in support of Zakharchenko read "Vote for life!", and pictured doves and children.[9] According to The New York Times, these billboards suggested "a tight race between Aleksandr Zakharchenko and Aleksandr Zakharchenko".[8] Other candidates did not use billboards or posters, and were generally unknown to voters.[16] DPR chief candidate Yuri Sivokonenko said "I didn't ask people to vote for me, because I don't have any differences in principle with Zakharchenko".[8]

A poll conducted by the Donetsk State University of Management evaluated voter support for candidates.[17] 53% of those polled supported Aleksandr Zakharchenko, whereas only 7% supported Yuri Sivokonenko, and 6% supported Alexander Kofman. Another survey, conducted by SOCIS, found that 51.3% of those polled supported Zakharchenko, 5.1% supported Sivokonenko, and only 0.8% supported Kofman.[14][18]

With regard to the parliamentary elections, a survey by the Donetsk State University of Management found that 48% of those polled supported the "Donetsk Republic" party, whilst 11% supported the "Free Donbas" party.[17] A survey by SOCIS found that 39.1% of those polled supported Donetsk Republic, whilst 31.6% supported Free Donbas.[14][18]

Roman Lyagin, head of the DPR central election commission, announced the results of the election on 3 November.

Four candidates vied for the position of LPR chief. These were incumbent LPR prime minister Igor Plotnitsky, Oleg Akimov, Larisa Airapetyan, and Viktor Penner.[14] Three political parties contested seats in the parliamentary elections: Peace for Luhansk Region, Luhansk Economic Union, and the People's Union.[14]

According to LPR central election commission head Sergei Kozyakov, voter turnout was greater than 60 percent. He said that more than 630,000 people had cast ballots in the elections. Results of the election were announced by him on 3 November 2014.[23]

The Donetsk People's Republic central election commission said that 50 foreign observers monitored the elections. Most of these observers were far-right politicians and activists, and were said to come from Russia, Abkhazia, France, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Israel and the United States.[15][26] Two organisations were involved in setting up this observer mission. These were the Eurasian Observatory for Democracy and Elections (EODE), run by the Belgian far-right activist Luc Michel, and the European Centre for Geopolitical Analysis (ECGA), run by Polish far-right politician Mateusz Piskorski.[26] Another newly created organisation called the "Agency for Security and Cooperation in Europe" (ASCE), and mainly made up of European far-right politicians, travelled to the DPR and LPR to attempt to legitimise the elections.[27] No monitors from the OSCE were present on election day, and the creation of the similarly named "ASCE" was widely viewed as farcical. One of the members of the organisation, Austrian far-right politician Ewald Stadler, later admitted that it did not legally exist.[10]