“New People” and the Growth Party will nominate each other’s candidates within the “political union”

The New People and the Growth Party have entered into a political alliance so as not to compete with each other in the regional elections to be held in September 2023. This was announced by party leaders Alexei Nechaev (New People) and Boris Titov (Growth Party). “Today, meetings of the Central Council of the New People Party and the Federal Political Council of the Growth Party were held. Our central bodies have decided to create a political union of the two parties as the basis for a broad coalition of all progressive forces in Russia,” Nechaev said. True, he noted that so far we are not talking about the legal unification of the two parties.

One could call this union a political bloc, but they are not permitted by Russian law, Titov said. He confirmed that there are no plans to unite the parties into one: “But who knows what will happen in the future, how the political situation will develop, how events will develop.” According to him, now the parties will adapt to each other, and then look at the circumstances.

The parties will set up a joint headquarters for regional elections in September. In particular, it is planned not to field candidates from parties in the same constituencies in the elections of the City Duma and Legislative Assembly. Preference will be given to stronger candidates from one party or another if no candidates have yet been nominated, and where parties have already nominated candidates, weaker candidates will be withdrawn, Nechaev said. “In a number of regions where lists have not yet been submitted, it is possible for candidates of one party to be included in the lists of another,” Nechaev said.

In addition, both parties will support the same candidates for mayor and governor, the New People leader said. He added that the parties are ready to act as a broader coalition for other political forces. Titov said that the parties are also discussing common candidates in the by-elections to the State Duma – in the fall they will be held in four single-mandate constituencies. Neither Titov nor Nechaev named the specific regions where the parties will scout out the nomination of candidates.

Parties will start discussing a common candidate for the 2024 presidential election only in the autumn, Titov said. Vedomosti previously wrote that New People were planning to nominate a candidate for this election. The Growth Party has many candidates who would like to participate in the elections, and their nomination from the New People will allow them to participate in the elections without collecting signatures, says a source in the New People.

Candidates from the New People really do not need to collect signatures in elections at all levels, but by law, members of one party cannot be nominated in elections from another, electoral lawyer Garegin Mitin emphasizes: “Hiding membership in another party is fraught with refusal to register a candidate or remove him from the elections. This was confirmed by political strategist Pyotr Bystrov, who recalled that one party cannot nominate candidates for another, for this the members of the Growth Party need to leave it. Electoral blocs are not permitted by law, the expert says, although at one time they played a big role, especially in regional elections.

Titov said that the parties are similar in many ways, as they support entrepreneurs, though they are different generations of businessmen. According to him, stability, order and progress are important for both parties. “We lived well, but lately we have been looking with great apprehension at what is happening and at a return to our “bright” past. Now many politicians are talking about the need to return the planned economy, the Soviet system. But we know what this leads to – it is not only a shortage, but also a drop in living standards. Most importantly, it leads to instability and banditry,” he said. The parties are uniting to counter this threat.

Titov also said that the Party of Growth and the New People have the same views on how the economy should develop in Russia. In particular, what the president said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum is similar to the provisions of the parties’ programs in the economic part, the politician believes.

Nechaev added that the two main support groups for both parties are entrepreneurs and youth. “Besides, we have a lot of women supporting us. At [думской] The New People faction is 40% women, while the Growth Party has 100%,” he joked (New People has four women out of 13 deputies of the faction, this is 30%. – Vedomosti). In the State Duma, the Party of Growth is represented by Oksana Dmitrieva, but as an independent deputy. When asked if she plans to join the New People faction, Titov said that she should be asked, but in general she supported the union.

The Growth Party has lost a lot of influence, Rostislav Turovsky, vice president of the Center for Political Technologies, notes: “In its current form, the New People association will not bring any resources, except for positions in several regions. It’s more of a way to anchor the Growth Party than to strengthen the New People.

This is an expected step in the face of limited opportunities for public party activity, Mikhail Vinogradov, president of the Petersburg Politics Foundation, says about the union. “Next comes the question of scenarios. The first is the takeover by the more instrumentally influential “New People” of the Party of Growth. The second is the update of the New People. It is difficult for them to fully appeal to the “unwarranted” liberal voter after the votes in the State Duma. And in general, they have not yet fully taken advantage of the growing vulnerability of other parliamentary parties – the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the Liberal Democratic Party, and now A Just Russia, – says Vinogradov. Therefore, the experience of the Growth Party, which in recent years has distanced itself from participating in the most traumatic decisions for the liberal voter, can be useful for returning to the political agenda, the expert adds: “Within the boundaries of what is permissible, but with the ability to push them apart.”

Petr Bystrov compares the alliance between the New People and the Party of Growth to how the Just Russia parliamentary party merged with the For Truth party before the State Duma elections in 2021. He stipulates that at that time there was also a legal unification of the two parties, but on the whole he considers the situation to be similar: “Then the party “For Truth” helped the Social Revolutionaries overcome the 5% barrier to enter the State Duma, since those in sociology were a little short of votes” .

A small Party of Growth could increase the New People’s chances of getting into the Duma in 2026, since now the New People are out of the existing agenda and do not fit into it, explains Bystrov. “But it is strange that the union of the parties was announced three years before the parliamentary elections, since such a union does not give an advantage to any of these parties in regional elections,” the political strategist emphasizes.