In what looks like a surprise victory, opposition candidate Yevgeny Roizman was leading the pro-Kremlin candidate by nearly 3 percent of the vote in the mayoral election for the Urals city of Yekaterinburg.
As of 5:16 a.m., Roizman of the Civic Platform party had collected 32.41 percent of the vote, compared to 29.81 percent for Yakob Silin, who is a deputy governor for the Sverdlovsk region and running on United Russia's ticket, according to Central Elections Commission data carried by Interfax.
Earlier, the Yekaterinburg elections committee said Roizman had 33 percent of the vote and Silin had 30 percent with ballots from 500 of 565 polling stations counted.
"The difference is about 10,000 votes," said Ilya Zakharov, the head of the Yekaterinburg elections committee, Interfax reported.
The winning candidate needs only a simple majority to win.
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