Diversity of Parties Represented in Regional Assemblies Increased Dramatically in September Elections, Andreychuk Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 18 – Voters in the 39 regions of the Russian Federation where elections were held in September for regional legislatures gave fewer votes to United Russia and the LDPR but more to the KPRF, Just Russia and a variety of other parties. As a result, more of the latter saw their candidates elected, Stanislav Andreychuk of the Golos organization says.

            That means both that these legislatures will be more politically diverse during their five-year terms and that the number of parties which will be able to nominate candidates for the Duma and other offices without collecting signatures has also increased (ridl.io/ru/v-regiony-vernulos-politicheskoe-raznoobrazie/).

            According to Andreychuk, this “will definitely lead to the revival of public politics in many regions, even if not in the whole country.” But at the same time, it will likely mean that Moscow and Untied Russia will adopt strategies designed to limit the impact of the electoral victories at this level of opposition parties. That too may add to politics at the regional level.

            While the Duma elections attracted vastly more attention, these changes at the regional level where new legislatures “were elected in 39 regions where almost half (45.5 percent) of the country’s voters reside” matter importantly, highlighting the importance of federal structures even as the Kremlin works against them.

            Andreychuk says there are “three types of regions in Russia,” as far as elections are concerned: “’electoral sultanates,’ in which official vote tabulations have nothing to do with reality … regions with a relatively fair vote count, and regions that are somewhere in between. In his Ridl article, he focuses only on the second and third groups.

            In these elections, 15 different political parties were registered, but only three had party lists in all 39 – United Russia, KPRF, and A Just Russia – For Truth. “Regionally, the competition ranged from three party lists in Chechnya to 11 in Karelia and Samara Oblast, the analyst says.

            In the regional contests, United Russia suffered “serious losses,” with its total vote falling 3.6 percent even though the number of voters increased. But “the most devastating loss this year [in regional voting] was suffered by the LDPR: its support fell by 40 percent.” Yabloko also lost ground and is now little more than a regional party near the center of the country.

            The big winners were the parties on the left: KPRF and its allies and A Just Russia. Indeed, if one takes fraud into consideration, the left approached the size of United Russia in a large number of places, something the Kremlin’s political technologists can be counted on to try to counter administratively and perhaps politically.