Sergei Levchenko, a candidate for the Communist party, won the second round of voting in gubernatorial elections in Siberia's Irkutsk region with 56.88 percent of the votes, Russian media reported Sunday.
His opponent, acting Governor Sergei Yeroshchenko, put forward by the ruling United Russia party, got 40.09 percent of the votes.
More than 90 percent of the votes had been counted by the time of publication, and spokespeople for the local election commission were cited by the NTV TV channel as saying that the rest of the votes would not influence the results significantly.
The second round of voting was determined on a day of voting across the county on Sept. 13, after Yeroshchenko failed to win the more than 50 percent of votes required to declare the elections complete in the first round. Levchenko got almost 40 percent.
The situation, though unusual for the country — this is the first time a second round of voting has been held since gubernatorial elections were reinstated in 2012 — was familiar to residents of the region and especially to Levchenko.
In 2001 he pushed Boris Govorin, then the incumbent governor, into a second round of voting, the Kommersant newspaper reported earlier this month.