Parties have their final dress rehearsal before the Duma election. Election results in the Krasnoyarsk territory

The Krasnoyarsk territory held an election for its legislature on April 15, and preliminary results were announced yesterday. United Russia is in the lead with 42.52% of the vote, and the Communists performed well with 20%.

The Krasnoyarsk territory held an election for its legislature on April 15, and preliminary results were announced yesterday. According to the territory's temporary election commission, United Russia is in the lead with 42.52% of the vote.

Thus, United Russia has secured 12 seats via party lists. The Communist Party (CPRF), which averages 13% of the vote nationwide, managed 20% in Krasnoyarsk. Thus, the CPRF has secured six seats via party lists.

Just Russia has ended up with three seats. Alexander Morozov, media projects manager for Just Russia, says that the party's campaign got off to a late start; it hadn't expected to get more than 11% of the vote.

The LDPR and the Union of Right Forces (SPS) will have three and two seats respectively. The Socialist United Party of Russia and the Democratic Party of Russia failed to cross the 7% threshold and won't have any seats at all.

Alexei Makarkin, deputy director of the Political Techniques Center, says that the Krasnoyarsk results indicate a rise in protest voting nationwide: "A lot of irritation has built up in our society, and now all parties - except United Russia - are appealing to social policy topics, abusing the bureaucracy and state officials. United Russia has proved to be the most vulnerable party from this standpoint - after all, it's very hard for United Russia to speak out against all that. If it starts denouncing the bureaucracy and state officials, it would have to criticize its own functionaries. The CPRF and the LDPR have always appealed to the protest vote, and now Just Russia is doing the same. This is a factor we'll see again in the federal elections."

Some party leaders have already expressed dissatisfaction with the Krasnoyarsk election situation. CPRF Central Committee member Oleg Kulikov told us that this was one of the dirtiest elections in recent years: "We were the target of a defamation campaign. We approached the Krasnoyarsk election commission and the courts, but nothing helped."

Sergei Shakhmatov, SPS branch leader in Krasnoyarsk, also reported numerous irregularities: "We detected a great many irregularities at local election commissions. For example, the Young Guard movement was acting unlawfully outside polling stations: handing out invitations to concerts and holding prize draws." Shakhmatov points out that voting results frequently failed to match the number of voters who visited polling stations, and "falsification tended to boost the number of voters." According to Shakhmatov, "the ballot-stuffing situation is obvious."

Political analysts have often described the Krasnoyarsk territory as Russia's "election mould," since voting results there tend to approximate the nationwide average. But Konstantin Simonov, president of the Center for Current Politics in Russia, says that the latest election results aren't 100% accurate as a picture of voter preferences and cannot be used as an indication of how Russia will vote in December: "The Krasnoyarsk territory produced an accurate result for United Russia, a less accurate result for the LPDR, and a slight exaggeration for the SPS. Figures for Just Russia and the CPRF would be accurate only if they are added together. Viewing this region as a model for tracking voter preferences can only be done by using adjustments that make it impossible to give precise predictions."

The Krasnoyarsk territory seems to have stopped being a mirror of nationwide voter preferences some time ago, as indicated by the presidential election of 2004. Vladimir Putin got only 60% of the vote in Krasnoyarsk - one of the lowest indicators of support for the president in the Russian Federation.

Published: "Nezavisimaya Gazeta", April 17, 2007  

Translated by Elena Leonova