Russia's electoral commission on Monday said that United Russia, the ruling party aligned with President Vladimir Putin, is
projected to win the parliamentary election that has been widely criticized as a “
sham.” The Central Election Commission (CEC) reported that 95% of the votes have been counted after a three-day
election that began last Friday and ended Sunday.
While the final counts are not expected to be certified until later this week, preliminary figures show that the pro-Kremlin party is projected to win a record 355 seats in the country’s 450-seat Duma, the lower house of parliament, giving United Russia an even larger supermajority than its 2016 record high of 343 seats.
Voter turnout was high at just over 59%, according to a briefing from the CEC.
The election is the first parliamentary poll since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and the Kremlin has cast it as a referendum on support for what it calls a “special military operation” rather than a war. It was also, therefore, the first parliamentary election to include voters from four partly occupied regions of Ukraine—Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia—which Moscow claimed to annex illegally in 2022 but does not fully control. Voting also was held in Crimea, which was illegally annexed in 2014.
Despite the vote being framed as an opportunity for citizens to express sentiments about the war, it is widely considered an illusion of choice: Russia’s supreme court last month banned the federal candidate list of the one registered antiwar party, Yabloko, from participating in the State Duma.
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United Russia’s supermajority could embolden parliament to pass “drastic legislation” with regard to future war efforts, Szakonyi says. Although United Russia already held a constitutional supermajority in the outgoing Duma, the larger margin could embolden lawmakers to pursue more severe measures.
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Parliament could specifically use the election to request more sacrifices from citizens for the war effort, according to Szakonyi. He says, for example, that the party could support legislation expanding military recruitment or defending “greater investment in the war effort, at the expense of healthcare, education, and domestic spending in general.”
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“That potentially gives Putin greater political cover and legitimacy for unpopular measures in the future—such as putting the economy in wartime production mode and potentially full mobilization," Lennon says.
A new mobilization campaign could inject new momentum into Russia’s offensive campaign and replenish battlefield losses. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last month that he believes Russia is planning to draft an additional 300,000 troops for the war effort.
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