It was a result that came as no surprise- the ruling United Russia party, backed by Vladimir Putin, won the parliamentary election with more than 54 percent of the votes.
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Russia΄s lower house of parliament will will be dominated by Kremlin loyalists after United Russia won 51 percent of the vote, partial results showed.
There were 450 seats up for grabs in the lower house of the Russian parliament (the State Duma), with 4,500 candidates running across 14 parties.
About 47 percent of eligible voters went to the polls, the lowest number since Russian Federation declared its 1991 independence and down from 60 percent in 2011 parliamentary elections.
Putin said the result was good for his party, but it only represented a token on confidence that the party had yet to justify.
Allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin comfortably won a parliamentary election, early results showed on Monday.
However, statisticians argue that United Russia’s huge win could have been plagued with voter fraud. In the previous election, voter turnout was artificially high and Moscow Times reports that 5.7 million votes for United Russia were actually fake. Election officials said Monday that turnout was almost 48 percent, substantially lower than the 60 percent turnout at the last parliamentary election.
The Communists have lost 50 seats, Liberal Democratic Party have lost 17, and A Just Russia lost 41.
A Just Russia party took 6.18% as the third member of the so-called “systemic opposition” in the Duma, which largely toes the Kremlin line on key issues.
But accusations of vote-rigging after the last election in 2011 caused mass street protests against the leader in Moscow.
Putin declared victory for the party at its campaign headquarters after the polls closed Sunday.
The officials were caught on surveillance camera stuffing paper into the ballot box. A well known human rights campaigner, Ella Pamfilova, was appointed as deputy chairman of the Russian Central Election Commission. Mariana Betsa, a Ukrainian foreign ministry spokeswoman, maintained that no voting in the Russian election would take place in her country including Russian diplomatic and consular buildings, BBC reported.
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Elsewhere, there were reports of serious irregularities in one Siberian region, with suggestions of “carousel” voting – people bussed around polling stations – in the city of Barnaul.
