On September 18th, Russians went to the ballot box for parliamentary elections. Not entirely surprising, United Russia, Vladimir Putin’s party, won the election with approximately 54% of the votes and will now occupy a little more than 75% of Duma’s 450 seats (up from 53%). With three-quarters of the vote, United Russia gains unlimited power and, for example, can change the constitution. It is likely, though not yet proven, that this resounding success has been achieved by massaging the numbers.
Russia’s elections contain a trove of statistical anomalies as research has revealed*. Past election results showed that as turnout (per pooling station or district) increases, so does United Russia’s or Putin’s share of the vote; this effect is not observed for the other parties, whose share remains constant or even declines. This is a strong indicator of ballot box stuffing. Further, turnout in Russia does not follow a normal distribution as in most other countries. The normal distribution for Russia’s elections breaks down on the right hand side of the graph below (i.e. a lot of cases of extremely high turnout which points to fraud), but there begin to appear consistent peaks at “convenient” intervals of 5%, as if the polling stations were working to targets.
Distribution of turnout (2011 parliamentary elections)
Also, there were substantial differences in results between paper-based and electronic polling stations (paper ballots are easier to produce, so paper-based polling stations gave higher results for United Russia than electronic polling stations, even in the same constituency).
This time, Mr. Putin, ever eager to play by the rules, took no chances and installed webcams to monitor polling stations and to detect possible fraud. He even appointed a credible head to the central electoral commission, Ella Pamfilova, Russia’s commissioner of human rights and a former Duma member. However, he made sure that there was not much to elect from. Boris Nemtsov, a respected liberal, was murdered in February 2015 and Alexei Navalny, a lawyer and political activist (he won 27% of the vote in the 2013 elections for mayor of Moscow), was kept out of the race by convicting him of fictitious charges. Then, state television aired a documentary showing footage of Mikhail Kasyanov, a former prime minister who is now one of the leaders of Parnas, Nemtsov’s former party, in a sexual encounter with Natalia Pelevina, an opposition activist, discussing other opposition leaders in a derogatory manner. This weakened Mr. Kasyanov’s position as other opposition leaders (specifically Ilyah Yashin, another Parnas leader) objected against him leading the party list. To top it off, Chechnya’s Kremlin-backed leader, Ramzan Kadyrov posted a video with Mr. Kasyanov in gun sight (just joking, he later said…)
From Chechnya with love…
Mr. Putin also brought the elections forward from December to September. Middle-class voters in Moscow and St. Petersburg, who tend to be more critical of United Russia, stayed in their dachas to enjoy summer instead of lining up to vote. Indeed, turnout was low at 48% and dropped to below 30% in main urban districts. The electoral system was changed so that half of the seats were based on votes for a party and the other half were based on votes for an individual.
Although most middle-class Russians do not support United Russia, it has to be said that Mr. Putin remains popular despite the economic recession. Presidential elections are due in March 2018, although we would not be surprised if also these elections are brought forward to September 2017, given the favourable outcome. Apparently, a Ministry of Finance document which was posted on its website showed that a budget (of RUB 15 billion) would be available for presidential elections in 2017.
*Refer, for example, to: “Statistical anomalies in 2011-2012 Russian elections revealed by 2D correlation analysis”, D. Kobak, S. Shpilkin & M. Pshenichnikov, May 2012; and “Statistical detection of systematic election irregularities”, PNAS, October 2012.