Vitali Klitschko for the past ten years prior to election day; and Klitschko had lived for many years in Ukraine and Germany, where, according to media reports, he has a residence permit. Opinion polls since early 2011 showed that the predicted percentage of votes that Klitschko would gain in the first round of the 2014 Ukrainian presidential election enlarged from 4.8% in December 2011 to 15.1% in February 2013, and an October 2013 Razumkov Centre poll predicted 19.3%. Klitschko was one of the dominant figures of the Euromaidan protests. During these protests, he retired from boxing. He confirmed on 28 February 2014
Vitali Klitschko Leonid Chernovetskyi but placed second with 26% of the vote, ahead of the incumbent Oleksandr Omelchenko Klitschko campaigned on an anti-corruption platform and lead the bloc "Civic party" PORA-ROP (the parties PORA and Reforms and Order Party) in the simultaneously held local elections for the Kyiv City Council. Analysts stated his relatively late entry into the campaign might have cost him votes. Still, Klitschko was elected as a people's deputy to the Kyiv City Council since "Civic party" PORA-ROP won 14 seats in the 2006 election. In the May 2008 Kyiv local election, he ran again and won 18% of