The governing United Russia party, the pillar of the regime of President Vladimir Putin, once again triumphed in the legislative elections, according to official data released Monday by Russia's Central Election Commission (CEC).
With around 90 percent of votes counted, United Russia, formally headed by Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev, is poised to be the majority party in the Duma_ Russia's lower house of parliament_ having obtained 343 of the 450 seats with 54.21 percent of the vote, increasing the number of seats by 105 since the last election.
Speaking at the party headquarters before the official results had been released, Putin declared victory, saying "It can be announced with certainty. The party has achieved a very good result. It won."
United Russia is set to be joined in the Duma by the three "pro-Kremlin opposition" parties, who generally back the regime: the Communist Party taking just 13.54 percent of the vote, the ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party (13.28 percent) and social-democratic Fair Russia (6.19 percent).
None of the other nine parties of the extra-parliamentary opposition managed to obtain the minimum five percent necessary to obtain seats in the Duma.
However, Sunday's election was marked by a low voter turnout with unofficial reports of just 47.84 percent of the electorate heading to the polls.
During the 2011 legislative elections, voter turnout was tabulated at 50.4 percent.
Voters stayed home in droves particularly in Moscow and St. Petersburg, the country's two main cities, where a few hours before the polls closed turnout was just 28.6 percent and 25 percent, respectively, only about half of what it had been five years ago.
It was in Russia's big cities that suspicions of election fraud surfaced in 2011, spurring many outraged people to take to the streets to protest, and this was a situation that the regime clearly wanted to avoid this time around.
In any case, the United Russia results seem to show that public discontent over the economic crisis, the effects of Western sanctions, the dramatic devaluation of the ruble and other problems have not dented to any great degree the public support for Putin himself.
The Crimean Peninsula participated in Russian elections for the first time since its annexation in 2014, despite protests from Ukraine.
Source: EFE
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