The Kremlin’s United Russia scooped three quarters of the seats in the 450-member State Duma after bolstering its tally to over 54 percent at a nationwide vote Sunday, securing a majority despite the longest economic crisis of Putin’s 16-year rule.
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Over 111 million people are eligible to vote in the Russian elections with 450 seats in the State Duma up for grabs. Neither of the two parties which openly oppose President Vladimir Putin was seen making it into the parliament.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin “once again received a massive vote of confidence from the country’s people”.
Russia’s Communist Party came a close third, while the anti-Putin opposition failed to break the 5 percent barrier to enter parliament, losing its only lawmaker there.
Reflecting the strength of nationalist feeling in Russia following the seizure of Crimea, the ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party came second to United Russia with around 15 percent of the vote, a strong showing for the party that is led by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a man regularly described as Russia’s Donald Trump.
The return of an old voting system, under which half, rather than all, deputies were drawn from party lists with the other half decided by votes for individuals, boosted United Russia’s seats.
Election officials said that as of 6 p.m. Moscow time, two hours before polling stations in the capital closed, turnout was 39.4 percent, substantially down on the 60 percent turnout at the last parliamentary election. In big cities such as Moscow and St Petersburg, activity was below 30%.
The Parnas opposition party, headed by former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov, meanwhile received a mere 0.6 per cent of the vote, early results showed.
While the day of the voting was cleaner and some opposition candidates were allowed on to the ballot, Kremlin critics say the vote is skewed from the outset given the partisan nature of state television and access to resources.
“You can’t elect yourself to the Duma if people don’t believe in the elections”, he wrote on Facebook.
For the first time since Moscow seized the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea in 2014, residents there voted for Russia’s parliament, in a poll slammed by Ukraine as illegal.
Opposition activists and European observers questioned how free and fair the vote had been, however, although there were no immediate signs the result might spark street protests of the kind which erupted after the last such election in 2011.
Ella Pamfilova pointed out that she was ready to meet with party leaders to discuss concrete facts of violations.
They called these elections very disappointing event, which was held with the voting irregularities.
Grigory Melkonyants, co-chairman of the election monitoring group Golos, attributed the weak showing on Sunday to voter apathy aided by nearly invisible campaigning by the ruling party and the opposition alike.
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“The results of the vote reflect our citizens’ reaction to attempts of foreign pressure on Russian Federation, to sanctions, to attempts to destabilize the situation in our country from within”, Putin said.
