18 September, 2016: residents young and old vote in Ekaterinburg. (c) Pavel Lisitsyn / RIA Novosti. All rights reserved.“Don’t vote” was the implied message, “but if you have to, vote for Putin” - the caveat. Yesterday, Russia went to the polls for legislative elections, which were, on the whole, some of the least “agitated” in 25 years of independence.
The turnout was 47%, with big (and potentially rebellious) cities like Moscow, Ekaterinburg, Nizhny Novogorod and Novosibirsk hovering between 20-30%. “Putin”, of course, meant the ruling party United Russia, which received a majority at 51% of the votes. There are some minor changes in the systemic opposition, meanwhile — the Communists received a surprisingly low 14% (down from 19%), whereas the Liberal Democratic party (don’t be fooled) rose slightly to 13.9% and Just Russia - 8.1%.
In many ways, these elections were superficially more “democratic” — the vote barrier for entering parliament was lowered, a section of the opposition was allowed to participate, and, in general, a range of parties registered in the protest years of 2012-2013 were involved. At the post-election morning briefing, Ella Pamfilova, the new head of Russia’s Central Election Commission, said that the commission hadn’t expected the results to turn out as they did.
