Moldova's Communist Party has retained its dominant position after parliamentary elections, according to an independent exit poll released after voting stations closed

Moldova's Communist Party has retained its dominant position after parliamentary elections, according to an independent exit poll released after voting stations closed. The communists, in power since 2001, were credited on Sunday with around 42% of the vote and the centrist opposition Bloc for Democratic Moldova (BDM) about 28%, according to the exit poll by the the Public Politics Institute. The nationalist Popular Christian Democratic Party (PPCD) was running in third place with about 14% of the vote, according to the survey of some 13,000 voters at 220 polling stations across the country. Voter turnout was estimated at nearly 59% of Moldova's 2.3 million voters. Although the communists came to power on a pro-Russian ticket, they have since done an about-face, partly because of disagreements with Moscow over its troop presence in the separatist region of Trandsdniestr, which Russia has tacitly supported since it broke away from Moldova after a short war in 1992.