Putin, speaking to United Russia campaign staff a few minutes after polling stations closed, said the win showed voters still trusted the leadership despite an economic slowdown made worse by Western sanctions over Ukraine.
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Russian people support political stability, Vladimir Putin said as he visited the United Russia campaign office.
The party is also able to draw on the support of the other three parties in the federal Duma, and benefits from its association with 63-year-old Putin, who after 17 years in power as either president or prime minister, enjoys a personal approval rating of about 80 percent.
The election for the Duma, or lower house, is being seen as a dry run for Mr. Putin’s expected presidential campaign in 2018. “The situation is tough and hard but the people still voted for United Russia”, he said on state television.
The poll by the VTsIOM agency was shown on state television Sunday evening as the final voting stations closed in western Russian Federation. Half the 450 seats are being chosen that way.
According to the incomplete official vote count, the populist LDPR party was in second place with 15.1 per cent, the Communists were in third on 14.9 per cent and the left-of-centre Just Russia party was fourth with 6.4 per cent.
This time, half of the parliament’s seats will be occupied by deputies included in the federal candidate lists of parties that will clear the 5 percent threshold.
The chief of the Russian Election Commission says that she sees no reason to nullify results in any location in the country’s parliamentary election.
Reuters reporters at one polling station in the Mordovia region of central Russian Federation witnessed several people casting their ballot, then coming back later and voting again.
In Moscow, independent election observers and opposition candidates on Sunday reported busloads of people arriving at their polling stations to vote, fueling speculations of multiple voting with the help of absentee ballots.
Our correspondent in Moscow Galina Polonskaya said: “Even if first comments at United Russia HQ were prudent, there’s less and less doubt that this party remains the undisputed leader”.
Polls closed at 9 p.m. local time (1800 GMT) in Russia’s westernmost region while Russia’s regions in the Far East and Siberia have been counting the ballots for several hours now.
The results are likely to change as votes are counted from the western parts of Russian Federation that are more urbanized and where opposition sentiment is stronger.
This election is a departure from the two previous votes for the Duma, in which seats were distributed on a national party-list basis.
Perceived honesty of the election could be a critical factor in whether protests arise following the voting. Voter turnout in Russia’s previous parliamentary elections in 2011 amounted to 60.2 percent.
Ella Pamfilova’s statement came Sunday as Russians cast ballots for the State Duma, the lower house of parliament.
Anger over widespread fraud in the 2011 election sparked large protests that unsettled authorities by their size and persistence.
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A candidate from the liberal Yabloko party in the Altai region of Siberia told state news agency Tass that young people were voting in the name of elderly people unlikely to come to polling stations.
