That concludes the live blogging for today. Join us tomorrow for more postelection news.
Updated results from the Central Election Commission:
With 94 percent of ballots counted from the March 31 election, Zelenskyy was on a pace for a strong first-place finish with 30.3 percent of the vote, according to results from the Central Election Commission (CEC). Poroshenko was well behind with 15.9 percent, followed by former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who had 13.4 percent.
The National Democratic Institute (NDI) election observer delegation has said that the election was “competitive and credible” despite the “long-standing need for electoral reforms.”
Matthew Luxmoore, one of our Moscow correspondents, looks at how viewers of Russian TV found themselves bombarded with coverage of Ukraine’s failures as an independent state and plenty of reports of alleged electoral fraud .
From RFE/RL's Christopher Miller in Kyiv:
Cindy McCain, the widow of late Senator John McCain and head of mission for the International Republican Institute (IRI), and Dr. Dan Twining, IRI president, gave a press conference following the election today.
McCain said that "by all measures, this represents a step forward in Ukraine democratization." She noted the number of young voters who came to the polls on March 31 and said her husband, who was an ardent supporter of Ukraine, would have been proud.
She said what she called a free and fair vote represents "how far Ukraine's democracy has advanced since independence."
Twining also suggested the election was a success and said voters were able to freely express their positions by voting "despite the Kremlin's efforts to portray these elections as illegitimate."
Twining said that Kremlin aggression has threatened to disenfranchise 16 percent of Ukrainian voters, as a result of its annexation of Crimea and military backing of pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
This attempt to disenfranchise voters by Russia does not undermine the legitimacy of the election, he said. Ukrainian authorities made a concerted effort to allow these voters to participate by creating a registration process for them.
Twining said that some delayed openings, poor ballot box conditions, and other minor infractions didn't undermine the election results.
Twining mentioned the far-right Azov National Militia, which had said its members with monitoring approval would result to violence on election day if they found what they perceived to be voting violations, "received extensive coverage" ahead of March 31. However, it does not appear the National Corps and other groups affected the election process in any way, Twining said.
And word from the OSCE monitors:
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which independently monitored the voting, said the first round offered a broad choice of candidates with strong turnout.
"Election day was well administrated and without disturbances," Doris Barnett, the head of the German delegation to the OSCE parliamentary assembly, told a news conference.
"The real work lies ahead. There are so many untouched reforms," she added.