The elections were conducted a little over a year since the 2014 snap local elections, which were only held throughout parts of the country. A second round of voting for the election of mayors in cities with more than 90,000 residents where no candidate gained more than 50% of the votes were held on 15 November 2015. Because of the ongoing conflict in East Ukraine and the February 2014 annexation of Crimea by Russia, local elections were not conducted throughout all of the administrative subdivisions of Ukraine. The highest number of seats were won by the Petro Poroshenko Bloc "Solidarity", Fatherland and Our Land parties, followed by the Opposition Bloc and the Radical Party. The Petro Poroshenko Bloc did well in the western regions, central Ukraine, and the Kherson Oblast of the south. The Opposition Bloc gained most of the votes of the south and east (except Kharkiv Oblast). In the west, Svoboda improved its performance compared with previous year's parliamentary election. A total of 132 political parties took part in the elections. The political parties contested for the 1,600 regional council seats in 22 regional parliaments, more than 10,700 local councils and mayoral seats. The voter turnout was 46.62% of the population. During the second round, the voter turnout dropped to 34.08%. Late January 2014 the Constitutional Court of Ukraine made a decision declaring that regardless of under which conditions the previous elections were conducted, regularly scheduled local elections must occur in October 2015. The Central Election Commission of Ukraine asked the government to allocate 1.2 billion hryvnias (approx. 100 million USD) towards financing the election (on 9 July 2014)  The campaign for the elections started on 5 September 2015. But since the start of the summer political advertising had begun to increase rapidly. This was marred with a sharp rise of handouts by potential candidates. Local issues were ignored by parties, who focused on national issues. According to Depo.ua and the Committee of Voters of Ukraine political parties spend at least $82 million on campaigning. They claim that during the last two months of the campaign political parties rented 75 percent of Ukraine's 20,000 billboards. More than 350,000 candidates (representing 132 political parties or as an independent candidate) were electable for 168,450 positions of mayors of cities, villages and settlements and for deputies of village, settlement, city, city district, district and 1,600 regional council seats in 22 regional councils. A candidate did not have to live in a constituency where she/he was electable.