Russian legislative election, 18 September 2016

[Zuza]

Oddly, in 2011, the opinion polls put United Russia about 5% higher than they actually got in the Duma election. This might be down to turnout or due to the last poll being two weeks before the elections, rather than anything radical. Also, United Russia were way down on the previous election in 2007.

VCIOM poll (19-20 Nov 2011)
United Russia - 53.7%
Communist - 16.7%
Liberal Dems - 11.6%
A Just Russia - 10.0%

Duma election (4 Dec 2011)
United Russia - 49.3% (-15.0 on 2007)
Communist - 19.2% (+7.6)
A Just Russia - 13.2% (+5.5)
Liberal Dems - 11.7% (+3.5)

That's not to say that there wasn't voting fraud, as it's pretty clear that there was. It would be interesting to know how transparent Russian opinion polling is, though.

This is mostly because of conformism (people give socially desirable responses) and because of undecideds more often tend to support opposition parties in the last moment. By the way, Navalny (one of the main leaders of non-system opposition) called his supporters to vote for any party besides United Russia (though this probably had little direct effect). Note that the poll underestimated KPRF (which is reluctantly supported by many anti-ER voters as the largest alternative and more genuine opposition than other 2 parliamentary parties) and A Just Russia (which is less unacceptable for many voters because, unlike KPRF and LDPR, it doesn't adhere to extremist ideology), but not LDPR. In all other polls, A Just Russia also was at the 4th place.

Turnout probably also affected results. And it's also likely that in the last 2 weeks United Russia actually lost some support.

Polls tend to overestimate pro-government candidates and somewhat overestimate LDPR (because of lower turnout of LDPR supporters). In the 2011 elections the difference between polls and official election results was small due to vote rigging, but in the 2013 Moscow mayoral elections, where there was very little vote fraud, Navalny surprisingly received much more votes than it was predicted by any pollster.

[Zuza]

The Communists also took over many of United Russia's talking points, e.g. regarding "propaganda" for homosexuality.

Actually, they were anti-gay long before it was cool, I mean, before United Russia started it's anti-LGBT campaign.

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No, Kremlin won't actively help it to get into the parliament. Maybe initially there was an intention to establish a fake two-party system with "right-wing" United Russia and "left-wing" A Just Russia, but if such plan ever existed, it was abandoned long ago. Ahead of the 2011 elections, A Just Russia went out of control, at least partially, and some of it's members played a major role in 2011-2012 protests together with non-system opposition. Most of them have been expelled from the party since then, and now it seems to be as pro-Kremlin as it was initially. But even in 2007, when A Just Russia was fully loyal to it's masters and close to not passing the threshold, the only party that got "votes" due to rigging was United Russia. And things probably won't change this time.

[Zuza]

Wasn't there a pro-Kremlin free market party around a few years ago? Are they still around, and if so, how will they do?

Yes, Pravoye Delo. Hailed by free-market Westerners, but also widely regarded as belonging to the category of fake opposition parties. They also belong to the category of 14 parties that do not have to have 150,000 signatures to contend in the elections and I suppose they might contend, although I don't find anything indicating they will do so on their website (but my Russian isn't that good), which is basically full of uninteresting facts. Indicates that even if they contend, they probably won't reach the threshold.

Interesting article on the party here, indicating that they are virtually dead, but I'm not sure if that is still the case. They have seats in the regional parliaments of Ingushetia and Dagestan, presumably because they are fiscally liberal and socially conservative

Prokhorov created his own party, named Civic Platform, in 2012. By the way, Roizman (mentioned in the article) won 2013 mayoral elections in Yekaterinburg under Civic Platform banner.

But later Prokhorov lost control over his new creation (not sure to what extent it was again due to Kremlin manipulations) and left it. Now both Right Cause and Civic Platform are dead corpses, though they will probably take part in the elections as spoilers.

[Zuza]

From what I remember last time, the ballot stuffing in 2011 was due to overeager regional cronies showing off and I'm willing to bet they'll be instructed to knock that off because it was really embarrassing for Russia.

Vote rigging will happen for sure, but maybe on a smaller scale due to the reasons you've stated.

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Actually, there are basically no changes from the last election: all the parties (including those that can be counted as opposition) from 2011 election will probably run, and, moreover, PARNAS (one of the 3 main parties of liberal opposition, together with Yabloko and unregistered Progress Party) have a right to take part in the election this time.

Progress Party members will participate under PARNAS banner, and maybe all 3 parties will try to form a joint list. But even then they will have very little chance to succeed.

[Zuza]

Wikipedia map is SVG, it can be rendered in different sizes up to 10000px.

Quick googling didn't find anything better.

[Zuza]

Anybody who knows more about Russian politics who can tell if any of the above are genuine opposition? Yabloko used to be decent if somewhat incompetent, but ISTR reading that they too had been infiltrated.

Of these 14, People's Freedom Party is certainly a genuine opposition. Yabloko too, maybe somewhat less genuine. It can be argued to what extent KPRF is an opposition.

[Zuza]

Yabloko stated that they would exchange Crimea for an iPhone

It seems you're wrong.

I became curious where did Yabloko say this, but found out only an article on a not well known site whose author figuratively tells that Yabloko proposes to exchange Crimea for iPhone; in the article he comments a political ad where Yavlinsky parodies iPhone presentation (keep in mind that "Yabloko" means "apple"), but this ad doesn't mention iPhone directly, and doesn't mention Crimea at all, directly or not.

[Zuza]

A very preliminary official results for single-member districts: United Russia 180, A Just Russia 6, KPRF 5, LDPR 4, Growth Party 2, Civic Platform 1, Rodina 1 and, notably, Yabloko 1.

Another very notorious fact is that turnout is a record low (40.37 % down from 60.1 % in 2011). And this is despite regional differences clearly show that it was falsified in some places (Kemerovo oblast 80 %, Tymen oblast 74 % etc.). But in most regions turnout doesn't seem to be especially abnormal (map) which, together with not very impressive United Russia result, suggests that overall level of vote fraud probably isn't that high.

So far the 5th place is occupied by Communists of Russia who siphoned off many KPRF votes (they ran under a similar name "Communist Party Communists of Russia" and a very similar logo and many KPRF voters are senile pensioners who can be easily fooled by such tricks).

[Zuza]

Didn't win yet, just leading in vote count. It wasn't entirely unexpected for liberal opposition to win a seat or two in some places where they have a strong candidate and vote rigging is small. 3 years ago Yabloko-backed independent won mayoral elections in Petrozavodsk.

Update (single-member districts): United Russia 198, KPRF 7, A Just Russia 5, LDPR 5, Civic Platform 1, Growth Party 1, Yabloko 1, independent 1; another 5 districts didn't report any results yet.

In multi-member constituency United Russia result is 52 % now and this percentage will probably continue to grow.

So the only thing that actually surprised me is a turnout, I expected it to be lower, but not that low.

[Zuza]

And "United Russia" could win even some more: about half of districts, which went for other parties didn't have "United Russia" candidates at all.

Yes, I forgot to mention this. United Russia didn't field candidates in 18 districts (I thought this number is smaller), including a places where Civic Platform and Rodina leaders run (unsurprisingly since Rodina leader Zhuravlyov is a former UR member). So actually not even a half, but a majority.

[Zuza]

Will Putin go full on North Korean and require the three other parties to join a United Front with UR, and then present voters with a single candidate list?

Nah. No need to. More trouble than it is worth.

And, BTW, this would not be North Korea. This is good old Soviet Russia. There were no "other parties" there. There was just the strong and united "Bloc of the Communists and non-party members".

I'm nitpicking, but what he described (several nominally independent parties united in a bloc and a single candidate list) is exactly North Korea (or China, or East Germany etc.) and not the USSR. Wouldn't say there is a difference though (except that these parties can become truly independent in case of democratization like it actually happened in East Germany).

[Zuza]

Vladimir Volfovich Eidelstein Zhirinovskiy

Wait.

Wait.

Zhirinovsky is a Jew? Zhirinovsky?!

This isn't even the craziest thing about LDPR. I'd say LDPR is the biggest and the most successful joke party in the world history.