MOSCOW (AP) – The biggest party supporting President Vladimir Putin scored an overwhelming victory in national parliament elections, winning three-quarters of the seats, the Central Elections Commission reported Monday.
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It’s an vast gain, more than 100 seats, for the party that held a majority in the previous parliament, and gives it enough strength to amend the constitution on its own.
United Russia’s gains came at the expense of three other parties that had largely complied with the Kremlin’s wishes.
Now, United Russia gets a constitutional majority in the State Duma, becoming even more dominant than before and ensuring more support for Putin than ever.
“Amid low voter turnout, Putin’s United Russia party carried over 53 percent of the vote, but single candidate districts means United will have a supermajority”, Charles Maynes reports from Moscow, for our Newscast unit.
No other party has overcome the 5 percent threshold for entry into the parliament by party tickets. Only 47.8 of voters cast their ballots, against 60 percent in 2011, electoral officials said.
Putin’s aides are likely to use the result as a springboard for his own campaign for re-election in 2018, though he has not yet confirmed that he will seek another term. Opposition parties, such as Yabloko, could not win any seats in the proportional or individual races, giving Putin and his allies a continued monopoly on power.
The Communist party was in second place with 13.5 percent of the vote, followed by the Liberal Democrats party on 13.3 percent and the Just Russia party on 6.2 percent, according to an incomplete vote count.
Meanwhile, the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM), put United Russia at getting 44.7 percent of the vote.
United Russia, backed by President Vladimir Putin, is far ahead in the nation’s parliamentary election, taking at least 44%, exit polls suggest.
After the last election, anger at ballot-rigging prompted large protests in Moscow, and the Kremlin will be anxious to avoid a repetition of that.
According to the Russian Election Committee, around 39.37 percent of voting had done two hours before the polling stations closed. That is nearly two times less comparing to the previous elections in 2011.
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The outcome is not expected to bring much change, since Parliament already acquiesces to Putin’s every request.
