Turnout was distinctly lower than in the last Duma election in 2011 – less than 48 percent nationwide compared with 60 percent. Putin said the level of participation was lower than previous years, but still “high”. Putin isn’t a member of the party nor has he formally campaigned for it.
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United Russia, backed by President Vladimir Putin, has won a majority in the country’s parliamentary election, far ahead of rival parties.
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. Half the 450 seats are being chosen that way. The other half will be taken up by candidates elected according to a first-past-the-post system in each of the 225 independent constituencies or districts that together form the Russian Federation.
The other three parties to clear the 5% barrier required to make it into the Duma are all broadly loyal to the Kremlin line.
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.
“The situation is tough and hard but the people still voted for United Russia”.
Among voting irregularities witnessed by Reuters were several people voting twice in one polling station in the Mordovia region of central Russian Federation.
Preliminary results announced by Central Election Commission (CEC) Chairperson, Ella Pamfilova, at a news conference, showed that United Russia garnered more than 54.28 percent of the party-list vote. Even the Kremlin official tasked with managing the vote, Vladimir Volodin, has described United Russia’s campaign as “sterile”, telling the business paper RBC that he believed the tactic was not to produce enthusiasm for the party but just to bring off a technically irreproachable campaign.
In the North Caucasus region of Chechnya, strongman Ramzan Kadyrov looked set to win the first electoral test of his rule after rights groups said that criticism was ruthlessly silenced during the campaign, winning nearly 98 per cent of the vote with 25 per cent counted. Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, left, speak at United Party’s election headquarters in Moscow, Russia, Sunday, Sept. 18, 2016.
Looming large over this election was the spectre of mass protests over vote-rigging following the last legislative polls in 2011, which grew into the biggest challenge to Putin since he took charge in 2000.
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Massive demonstrations broke out in Moscow after the last Duma election in 2011, unsettling authorities with their size and persistence. United Russia candidates also dominated the direct voting, meaning that in the end they will control 76% of the seats in the new Duma, giving them the two-thirds majority required to change the constitution.
