Moscow does not believe in the opposition – Newspaper Kommersant No. 168 (7369) of 09/13/2022
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In the elections to the councils of 125 districts of Moscow, which ended on Sunday, United Russia received the overwhelming majority of mandates, and the My District association, loyal to the authorities, took second place. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation, having shown the best result among the opposition, nevertheless lost two mandates in comparison with the previous elections, A Just Russia – For Truth and the Liberal Democratic Party, on the contrary, improved their results in 2017. And the greatest losses were suffered by the Yabloko party, which, according to official data, got only three deputies instead of 176 in 2017.
The Moscow City Electoral Committee (MGIK) on September 12 summed up the preliminary results of the municipal elections in 125 districts. According to official data, 1,160 out of 1,417 mandates (81.86%) were received by United Russia (ER). In second place, by a huge margin, is the My District association loyal to the authorities, which got 134 deputies (9.46%) through. Of the parliamentary opposition parties, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation had the best result – 42 seats, A Just Russia – For Truth (SZRP) and New People each took 20 mandates, the Liberal Democratic Party – 11. Only four candidates from non-parliamentary parties went to municipal councils: three from ” Apple” and one from the “Communists of Russia”, and self-nominated candidates took 26 mandates. True, these data may still change: for example, in the Lyublino region, candidates from the United Russia and the Liberal Democratic Party won the same number of votes, and the winner will be determined by lottery.
The IPCC also released separately the results of online and offline voting, which turned out to be very different. So, according to the results of only one remote electronic voting (DEG), in which 1.7 million voters participated, United Russia and “My District” would have received noticeably less than what came out as a whole – respectively 70.7% and 8.75% of mandates . But for New People, such a form of voting, if it were the only one, would add 31 mandates. And even the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, which traditionally opposes the DEG, would receive an increase of four seats.
In the traditional “paper” voting (695.2 thousand voters), EP, excluding the DEG, would have earned 80.59% of the mandates, and “My District” – 8.54%. Of the opposition at the polling stations, the candidates most often supported the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (2.89% of potential mandates) and Yabloko (2.47%), as well as self-nominated candidates: offline elections would have brought them 4.02% of mandates (against 1.83% in in general). In total, 7.4 million Muscovites were included in the voter lists.
In general, according to the results of the 2022 elections, the most noticeable losses compared to 2017 were incurred by Yabloko (even taking into account the decrease in the number of seats filled from 1502 to 1417), whose representation in the councils decreased by almost 60 times. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation lost two mandates, the SZRP improved its result twice (in 2017, the party won only ten mandates), and the Liberal Democratic Party – almost three times (in 2017 it had four seats in the district councils).
Although only the preliminary results of the elections have been made public so far, it can be stated that the situation of five years ago, when there was not a single pro-government candidate in eight district councils, will definitely not be repeated. For example, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, as the leader of the Moscow Communists Nikolai Zubrilin told Kommersant, had the best results in the Sokol district, where three of its candidates were selected. According to Mr. Zubrilin, if the votes were counted correctly at Sokol, five rather than three communists would have received mandates, and in total the Communist Party of the Russian Federation would have taken 103-104 seats in Moscow. For SRZP, the most successful districts, according to the head of the Moscow branch of the party, Dmitry Gusev, were Yaroslavsky (three mandates) and Golovinsky (two). The “new people” distinguished themselves in the Danilovsky district and in Khovrino, where two candidates each will receive mandates, the party’s press service reported.
The non-systemic and non-parliamentary opposition, when summing up the results, was more guided by the data from the polling stations, since they did not recognize the results of the DEG as correct. So, in Yabloko they claim that they received four mandates, and not three, as calculated in the IPCC. Opposition platforms that helped independent candidates also reported very modest results. For example, the project of the former candidate for the State Duma from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Mikhail Lobanov and the deputy of the Zyuzino district Alexander Zamyatin “Nomination” took nine mandates (with 129 candidates), the team of ex-“Yabloko” Dmitry Kisiev “Headquarters of Candidates” – two (31 people nominated), and the team of the National Democrat Roman Yuneman – one mandate (with 42 candidates).
Regional teams of oppositionists and activists basically received one or two mandates each. The exception was a group from the Kurkino district, which is headed by the chairman of the current council of deputies, Ilya Svetikov: a team of ten people managed to win six mandates. True, on the complaint of one of the opponents, the votes were recounted, and the activists lost one mandate, but they intend to challenge this. Many other candidates are also going to complain about the results of the voting, fixing the “drawing of the protocols”.
We also note that two oppositionists won the elections, having the status of suspects in criminal cases. These are the current deputy of the Tverskoy district, Ketevan Kharaidze, who has been under house arrest for more than a year on charges of fraud, and Samson Sholademi, nominated in Lefortovo, who is under a ban on certain actions in a libel case.
The victory of the candidates in power, as well as the increase in turnout (this year it was almost 2.3 times higher than in 2017), were the result of a three-day vote and the DEG, political analyst Alexei Makarkin believes. With their help, the authorities were able to mobilize a loyal electorate, which is “quite apolitical and preferred dachas to polling stations,” the expert explains. The opposition, in his opinion, on the contrary, experienced problems with mobilization due to intensified internal conflicts: “It was weakened by different views on participation in elections itself, and many platforms for nominating candidates, and changing the position of Yabloko, which refused to nominate a lot of people.” Another problem of the opposition is the impossibility of a strategic vote, the main purpose of which would be to support not an ideologically close, but any candidate capable of gaining the largest number of votes and weakening power, Mr. Makarkin sums up.
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