Post-Election Analysis

In an election that the independent media outlet Meduza called the "dirtiest of the Putin era," Russia's ruling party United Russia won a record number of seats in the Duma. The first election conducted during the war in Ukraine, the expectations for the legitimacy of the results were low, and the results show this reality. United Russia received 349 seats of the 450 seat Duma, beating its previous record of 343 seats. Opposition parties won the remaining seats, with the Communist Party winning 37, the Liberal Democratic party winning 23, New People with 19, and Just Russia with 17. According to Putin, Ukraine war veterans ran and won 46 seats. This comes as no surprise to election watchers. The only real opposition party, Yabloko, Russia's oldest liberal party and only pro-peace party, was banned from the party list on the ballot by the Russian Supreme Court in August. Voting was claimed at 59.8%, including staged voting in Russian-occupied Ukraine, and was the highest since 2011.

Media outlets report a series of repressive activities employed by the government in the months leading up to and during the elections. According to Ridl, an independent Russian outlet, authorities used administrative measures to "sterilize" the ballot, with fines, police reports, and court rulings barring opposition candidates from the race. In Saint Petersburg, there were 36 reports, in Perm, 29, and in Moscow, 17. These are only where incidents could be definitively documented. After the election began, there was more direct obstruction of voters' rights. Observers were denied access to polling stations, and movement inside polling stations were restricted. There were 34 incidents of physical violence and several arrests against observers attempting to view and film the electoral process. Statistics show 279 observers were denied access in the Leningrad region and 260 in St. Petersburg. Post-election there have also been reports of suppression.

Across the country, the election has been met with fierce public backlash. On September 25th, a rally against election fraud took place in Syktyvkar. This protest numbered around 100 people and organized by the regional branch of the Communist party was called due to reports of mass voter fraud. Applications have been filed for other regions, including Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kazan, Yekaterinburg, and most major cities. According to Radio Free Europe, a protest has been filed in Krasnodar by a Yabloko activist due to election rigging. Meduza cites a few of these upcoming rallies as well, including one in Perm with 500 people on October 4th, another on October 3rd with around 500 people in Izhevsk, as well as one in Kazan scheduled for October 3rd and 4th. The sheer number of these rallies at a time where it is illegal for Russians to protest in groups larger than 1,000 shows a unique moment of instability and anti-government sentiment in the Russian Federation.

Ria, a pro-government news source, defends the election as legitimate and fully legal. It cites Western outlets like the Washington Post, the New York Times, Reuters, the BBC, and even the Vatican News channel as anti-Russian propaganda that intends to deny what it believes was a free and fair election. It also describes the lengths to preserve electoral integrity with threats of Ukrainian drone and cyber attacks and misinformation campaigns.

These recent elections provide a rare glimpse into the public opinion of the government. Despite widespread election engineering and voter suppression by the Kremlin, the large public backlash shows an increasing amount of distrust and dissatisfaction of the Russian government by its own citizens. The fact that these elections were so dirty demonstrates an increasingly dire situation for Putin's government, and though we can never truly know, it shows that the government has nowhere near the amount of public support it once had before the war. These elections never would have shown a true poll on Putin's popularity within Russia, but the actions surrounding the elections, such as the protests and government ballot-stuffing, show that the Russian Government's position is not as secure as it claims. Putin's rule on Russia is not invincible and these elections demonstrate deep divisions in Russia and how fragile the system truly is.