According to preliminary results, the ruling United Russia party heads the list, winning 343 mandates in the seventh Duma (76.22 percent of the seats). During his KGB career he was a communist until 1991, then a member of NDR in 1995, in 2008 Putin becomes a head (not a member!) of the party United Russia.
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President Putin is satisfied with the results, indeed, the Russian leader noted in his speech in front of UR activists that party had “achieved a very good result”.
About 111 million people were eligible to vote at 94,000 polling stations.
The ruling United Russia party, founded by Putin nearly 16 years ago after he first became president, was on track to win 343 seats or 76 percent of 450 available seats in Russia’s Duma, the lower house of parliament, the Central Election Commission said, after 93 percent of ballots had been counted. The Communists will have 42 – a sharp drop from 92 – the nationalist Liberal Democrats 39 and A Just Russia 23.
The Just Russia party won 6.2 per cent, according to the incomplete vote count.
Russia’s parliamentary elections brought a landslide win for President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia and its allies, in a vote that gives Putin a free hand in the country he first led in 2000.
“I’m upset by such a low turnout at these polls. Russians are letting go possibly the last chance to change the authorities democratically”, Kasyanov said after the vote ended. In big cities such as Moscow and St Petersburg, activity was below 30%.
Sunday’s election follows a tumultuous few years that have seen Russian Federation seize the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine, sparking its worst standoff with the West since the Cold War, and the start of a military campaign in Syria.
Overall interest in the vote was down dramatically after a low-key campaign that was dubbed the most boring in recent memory.
The former scandal-tainted election chief was removed in favor of human rights advocate Ella Pamfilova, but she too was accused by the opposition of ignoring violations even when they were caught on camera. She said she did not expect the results to change significantly in the count of the remaining ballots.
Grigory Melkonyants, co-chairman of the election monitoring group Golos, said the lower voter turnout reflected less anxiety among local authorities to produce a high turnout.
The poll also caused a diplomatic spat with Ukraine as residents on the Crimea peninsula elected candidates to Russia’s parliament for the first time since Moscow annexed the region in 2014.
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It also dominates the more than 80 regional parliaments.
