MOSCOW — Increasingly restive Russian voters are going to the polls today to elect a new State Duma as the ruling party, led by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, faces dwindling support.
The United Russia party is still expected to win the most seats in parliamentary elections that have been marred by harassment of election observers and allegations of thousands of electoral violations. But the party is expected to lose its vast majority in the Russian lower house.
Today’s vote pits seven parties against each other. It is seen as a key test for Putin three months before his all-but-certain return to the Kremlin in the March presidential election.
Putin’s approval rating — although in gradual decline — remains at around 60 percent. His promise to rule with a strong hand and maintain stability in Russia remains attractive among some voters who loyally back United Russia, despite its precipitous fall in popularity.
“I’m going to vote for United Russia so that everything remains stable,” Sergei, an 80-year-old pensioner, told RFE/RL on his way to vote at a central Moscow polling station. “I’ve always voted for them. Why? Because I think it will give us stability.”
But many Russians think today’s vote will be rigged and that the government is allocating tracts of budget funds in a campaign to keep United Russia in power.
Websites Attacked
Websites for numerous news outlets — including the liberal, independent Ekho Moskvy radio station — were hit today by apparent denial-of-service attacks and were inaccessible to the public.
“The attack on the site on the day of the elections is clearly linked with an attempt to hinder the publication of info about violations,” Aleksei Venediktov, Ekho Moskvy’s chief editor, said in a Twitter message this morning.
A week ago at a United Russia congress, Putin accused unspecified Western-financed organizations of trying to foment instability in Russia.
On the eve of elections on December 2, Golos, Russia’s only independent election monitor, was fined 30,000 rubles — about $1,000 — for what was described by authorities as a breach of election protocol.
Golos, which is partially financed by the European Commission, has recorded more than 5,000 election violations during the campaign ahead of today’s voting.
Golos employees say they think they are being targeted by authorities in a campaign to discredit their election monitoring activities.
Late on December 2, the NTV television station aired a report on Golos’s foreign funding that its alleged goals are “purely political.” NTV is owned by the state-controlled natural-gas monopoly Gazprom.
On December 3, the monitoring group’s chief, Lilya Shibanova, was detained at a Moscow airport for 12 hours and her laptop was confiscated.
Voting Against United Russia
Many voters have tired of what they see as the authoritarian instincts of the government and the threat of stagnation that hovers over Russia as Putin runs for a third presidential term, 12 years after he first became acting president because of the surprise resignation of President Boris Yeltsin.
A sailor from the Russian Pacific Fleet votes in the Far East city of Vladivostok.
Olga, a 36-year old employee at privately owned company in Moscow, said she refused to participate in the last State Duma elections. But she told RFE/RL that her disgust at the party of power has forced her out of her political apathy.
“I’m probably going to vote for Yabloko,” she said. “I know they are unlikely to make it [pass the barrier of 7 percent to gain Duma representation]. But I’m doing it to vote against United Russia.”
United Russia held 315 of the 450 seats in the last convocation of the State Duma. Public opinion surveys suggest that United Russia is set to lose its “constitutional majority” as a result of today’s vote — and with it the right to change the constitution and impeach the president. It may still win a majority, although failure to do so would force it into a coalition.
Research released November 28 by the state-run All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM) suggested that Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR), Gennady Zyuganov’s Communist Party, and Sergei Mironov’s center-left A Just Russia would win seats.
Three others — Yabloko, a liberal party whose list is led by economist Grigory Yavlinsky, the center-right party Right Cause, and the nationalist Patriots of Russia — were expected to struggle to garner enough votes.