United Russia, the party of President Vladimir Putin, has won Russia’s parliamentary election with 57.9 per cent of the vote. The official figures, published by the Central Election Commission (CEC) with 90.43 per cent of ballots counted, put the ruling party more than 40 points clear of its nearest rival.
The Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) came second with 13.8 per cent, according to CEC data reported by Russian news agency Interfax. The Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) took 8.9 per cent and New People won 7.9 per cent.
A Just Russia polled 4.95 per cent, leaving it below the 5 per cent needed for party-list seats. Earlier partial counts had placed the party above that mark and final results were not expected before September 25.
Half of the 450 seats in the State Duma, the lower house of the Federal Assembly, are allocated through party lists and the other half in single-member constituencies. United Russia was on course to keep the two-thirds majority that allows it to amend the constitution, according to projections by State news agency TASS.
Turnout reached 56.7 per cent, according to the CEC, up from 51.7 per cent in 2021. The commission said Moscow had recorded its highest participation ever.
Voting took place on September 18-20 and was the first State Duma election since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The final day was overshadowed by what Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin described as the largest drone attack yet on the Russian capital. Sobyanin said more than 1,600 drones had been shot down since September 19 and accused Kyiv of trying to sabotage the vote.
Three people were killed in the Moscow region and two in the Russian-held part of Ukraine’s Kherson region, according to local authorities and the CEC. CEC chair Ella Pamfilova said one of the victims in Kherson was a member of a local election commission, killed when a drone struck a bus.
Pamfilova also reported more than 1,000 waves of cyberattacks against election infrastructure. She said attempts to disrupt the vote had failed.
Opponents of the Ukraine War were largely absent from the contest. In August, Russia’s Supreme Court struck the liberal Yabloko party’s federal list from the ballot, removing the only registered party openly opposed to the conflict.
All 10 parties that remained were considered close to the Kremlin and supportive of the war, according to AFP. Democracy watchdogs, Western governments and Kremlin opponents dismissed the election as neither free nor fair, the agency reported.
United Russia had leaned on celebrity backing during the campaign. Ice hockey star Alexander Ovechkin appeared in a party campaign video days before polls opened.
