No candidate received a majority in the first round of the election with the incumbent President Robert Kocharyan winning slightly under 50% of the vote.

The election had been held when Levon Ter-Petrossian was forced to resign as President after agreeing to a plan to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which his ministers, including Kocharyan, had refused to accept.

[1] On the 7 August 2002 the Central Electoral Commission of Armenia announced that the presidential election would be held on the 19 February 2003,[2] with nominations required by 6 December 2002.

[4] President Kocharyan had already announced that he would be running for re-election and the opposition parties attempted to agree on a united candidate to oppose him but were unsuccessful.

[7] Opinion polls in the run up to the election showed President Kocharyan as likely to win the 50% required in order to avoid a second round.

[17][18] Hrant Mikayelian, researcher at the Caucasus Institute, noted that while falsifications during the election were significant and widespread, Kocharyan would have still won it in the second round, but at a far smaller margin.