This year the United Election Day in Russia will take place on September 13th. Heads of regions in 21 regions of the federation will be elected. New compositions of 11 regional parliaments and MPs of 23 administrative centers will be defined; a lot of municipal elections will take place. The voting process will cover more than 51 million voters. 55 of 78 registered parties of Russia will participate in the elections. More than 91 thousand seats will be voted on, more than 1300 elected positions. About 207 thousand candidates were nominated to participate in the elections, 191.5 thousand of them were registered.
Sergey Markov, director of the Institute of Political Studies, says that these elections will be more important than the previous ones: “These elections are oriented towards 2016. All parties are conducting their campaigns on a preparatory basis for the parliamentary elections. They thaw the candidates, slogans, campaign offices, tools, and so on.”
According to the political scientist, everyone can be sure that the United Russia party will get the biggest number of votes: “The party was founded by Vladimir Putin, is working with Vladimir Putin, working for Vladimir Putin, and all key decisions of the party are taken by Vladimir Putin. Therefore, for voters, of course, the main motive of voting for United Russia is a vote to support Vladimir Putin.”
Markov says that all the parliamentary opposition parties will confirm their current positions: “The Communist Party continues to be the number one opposition party. First, the communist electorate votes for the Communist Party, which believes that the Soviet model was the best. Secondly, there are voters among those who believe that there is little social justice. Thirdly, people with opposition views also vote for the Communists, just so as not to lose their vote, they vote for the strongest opposition party.”
Speaking about chances of the Liberal Democratic Party, the expert points out: “First of all, of course, this is nationalist electorate. In addition, it is an electorate inspired by the personal charisma of Vladimir Zhirinovsky.. I call him "the only postmodernist in Russian politics." People who look at him are well aware that he does not think the way he speaks. But he speaks better than anyone else. Everybody understands that he will never be in power, but for what he says, people are going to vote for this.”
With regard to the non-parliamentary opposition, it is rather weak, according to Markov: “It will confirm its weakness. Maybe in some places there will be some unique moments, when someone from the already serious people who did not find a contact with the parliamentary opposition will decide to join some particular non-parliamentary opposition. That is, they will win not because they are parties, but because a particular local person will make a deal with them.”
