Karapetian’s nephew and right-hand man Narek, who topped the list of the bloc’s candidates, joined other opposition leaders in alleging widespread electoral fraud.
According to the preliminary results released by the Central Election Commission (CEC), Civil Contract won the elections with 49.8 percent of the vote. Strong Armenia came in a distant second with 23.3 percent, followed by former President Robert Kocharian’s Hayastan alliance (almost 10 percent) and businessman Gagik Tsarukian’s Prosperous Armenia Party (just under 4 percent).
The three opposition groups cried foul after Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian claimed a “historic victory” early on Monday when less than one-fifth of the ballots cast were counted by election officials. Pashinian and his political allies deny that his statement predetermined the vote results.
Narek Karapetian said that Strong Armenia will formally petition the CEC on Friday to “annul the election results and reconsider the ruling party's votes.” He said that the bloc will appeal to the Constitutional Court if the CEC rejects the demand.
Hayastan announced on Tuesday plans to challenge the CEC figures in the court. It claimed that they were seriously affected by “widespread government pressure, arrests of oppositionists, unprecedented use of administrative resources, and electoral violations.”
Pashinian again rejected the vote-rigging claims on Thursday. He alleged that the three opposition forces themselves bought all of their votes.
“Civil Contract got 100 percent organic votes, while the other forces received 100 percent bribed votes,” he told reporters. “Nobody voted for them without money.”
According to the CEC tally, Strong Armenia, Hayastan and the BHK garnered a total of about 544,000 votes, compared with the ruling party’s almost 728,000 votes.
Armenia - People attend an election campaign rally of the Strong Armenia bloc in Yerevan, June 3, 2026.
Hundreds of their members and supporters were arrested during the election campaign and even on election day on vote-buying charges rejected by the opposition trio. Its leaders say that the crackdown also influenced the vote results.
Strong Armenia and Hayastan are planning to legally challenge the results as they are urged by some of their supporters not to take up their seats in the new Armenian parliament and thus undermine its legitimacy. Their leaders are clearly leaning against that option. Some of them have argued that Pashinian’s party fell short of a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly necessary for enacting a new constitution demanded by Azerbaijan.
Kocharian’s and Karapetian’s blocs also hope that the BHK will clear the 4 percent legal threshold for entering the parliament. In that case, Civil Contract will also lack a 60 percent majority needed for enacting some key laws and installing senior law-enforcement officials and judges handpicked by Pashinian.
According to the CEC, the BHK got 3.996 percent of the vote. The opposition party led by businessman Gagik Tsarukian has suggested that the electoral body headed by a longtime collaborator of Pashinian resorted to “trickery” to steal its parliament seats.
The BHK and several other opposition contenders initiated on Tuesday vote recounts in many precincts across the country. The CEC is due to release the final election results on Sunday.