Organizers and participants of the 2023 regional elections summed up the preliminary results of the completed campaign

The organizers and participants of the 2023 regional elections summed up the preliminary results of the completed campaign on Monday. Both of them focused mainly on the positive: the former focused on the minimum of violations, the latter on their own electoral successes. And only the leader of A Just Russia – For Truth (SRZP) Sergei Mironov complained about “an attempt to eliminate the party from the political arena” and threatened with organizational withdrawals the heads of those branches where the SRZP was unable to enter the legislative assemblies.

The regional and municipal elections of 2023 have set a record for voter turnout, said Ella Pamfilova, Chairman of the Central Election Commission (CEC) on the morning of September 11. More than 45 million out of a potential 67 million voters participated, and the average turnout was 43.5%, a record for a similar-level election since 2017. 33 thousand candidates from 13 parties were elected. As a result of the campaign, 13 parties confirmed the right to participate in parliamentary elections without collecting signatures, and one (the Russian Party of Freedom and Justice) lost it.

Ms. Pamfilova especially noted the insignificant number of violations: over the three days of voting and during the counting of votes, the CEC received 936 complaints, and information about alleged violations was contained in less than half of them.

Nevertheless, the head of the Central Election Commission promised to consistently and harshly fight against attempts to coerce the vote: “We are facing the most serious presidential elections, and such methods are unacceptable if someone allows themselves to do this.” In total, violations were detected at 21 polling stations in 12 regions, and 1,307 ballots had to be declared invalid. In four polling stations, the results of the vote as a whole were declared invalid: in the Crimean Bakhchisarai, there was a stuffing of ballots, in two polling stations in Buryatia, an excess of ballots in portable boxes over the number issued was revealed, and in Shuya (Ivanovo region) safe packages were used incorrectly. Apparently, in the future it will be necessary to look for some kind of replacement for this method of storing ballots, Ella Pamfilova noted.

The Moscow mayoral elections were also marked by a low number of complaints and violations, the Public Headquarters for Monitoring the Capital Elections indicated. So, for the first time since the existence of the headquarters (since 2013), there were no complaints about home voting, the head of the headquarters, Vadim Kovalev, said on the evening of September 10: “Remember what happened before, what discussions there were about this. Voting in pre-trial detention centers, voting in hospitals—silence.” Also, for the first time this year, there were no complaints about the queues at the polling stations where the military usually vote. In total, 250 “signals” were received at the headquarters during the voting, all of them were sorted out.

Representatives of five parliamentary parties took turns reporting on the election results at the TASS press center on Monday, and most of them found reasons for optimism.

Secretary of the General Council of United Russia (ER) Andrey Turchak stated that his party “won a convincing overall victory.” “In elections at the level of legislative assemblies and administrative centers, we took more than 80% of the mandates. I would especially like to note that at all levels “United Russia” for the first time received a qualified majority everywhere. These are two-thirds who can make any decisions,” said the United Russia member.

Almost everywhere United Russia has improved its results compared to 2018, somewhere even twofold, Mr. Turchak continued, especially highlighting the elections to the Legislative Assembly (LA) of the Irkutsk region, where five years ago the party took only second place, and record results in the elections to the city dumas of Yekaterinburg and Krasnoyarsk.

Deputy Secretary of the United Russia General Council Sergei Perminov, in turn, mentioned the by-elections to the State Duma, in which United Russia not only won, but also improved (in three of the four constituencies) the results of their predecessors. Answering questions from the media, Andrei Turchak acknowledged that the success of the United Russia was facilitated by the “cohesion of society”, but he also singled out the “party factor” – the constant improvement of mobilization work. These efforts will continue as the party must bring more than 30 million supporters to the 2024 presidential election, he added.

Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Gennady Zyuganov also focused on positive results for the party. Particular emphasis, according to him, was made by party members in the elections in Khakassia and the Oryol region, where communist governors were successfully re-elected for a new term.

And the first deputy chairman of the Central Committee, Yuri Afonin, responded in absentia to unnamed critics: “Despite the fact that since the morning a number of our political opponents, analyzing the elections, have been talking about some kind of failure, they say, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation is the main opposition party.”

He explained the decrease in its results compared to 2018 by the fact that then the campaign took place against the backdrop of pension reform and a “high level of protest”, but if compared with 2022, the Communists even “increased a little” in the elections to the Legislative Assembly. Separately, Mr. Afonin singled out the election of the mayor of Moscow, which the candidate from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Leonid Zyuganov “worked out actively” and “increased the result of 2018 in absolute votes.”

LDPR leader Leonid Slutsky assessed the results of the campaign even more optimistically. “The LDPR is greatly strengthening! We are actively moving towards becoming the first among the opposition parties and the second political force in the country,” he said with enthusiasm.

The politician recalled that the Liberal Democrats came second in the elections to the Legislative Assembly in seven regions, and he was especially proud of the results of the elections in new regions: in the LPR and the Zaporozhye region, the Liberal Democratic Party took second place, and in the DPR lagged behind the Communist Party “by some fractions of a percent.”

The party leader also assessed the Moscow campaign positively: “Boris Chernyshov worked seriously, with a twinkle.”

But the leader of the SRZP, Sergei Mironov, admitted that the Right Russians have no reason to be satisfied. He stated that this year “an unprecedented attempt was made to remove SRHR from the political arena”, without specifying, however, who specifically sought this.

At the same time, Mr. Mironov threatened with organizational conclusions the leaders of those regional cells where the party did not overcome the barrier in the elections to the LA: “I warned that failure to overcome the barrier would mean the removal of the head of the regional branch. This will be done; some colleagues have already written a statement.”

The leader of the SRZP was especially surprised by the results of the elections to the parliament of the DPR, where the Social Revolutionaries will not have a single representative. “They know us well there, unlike other comrades. Nevertheless, we considered it possible to make sure that our candidates and our party did not receive the necessary votes, ”complained Sergei Mironov.

Finally, the leader of the New People, Aleksey Nechaev, pointed out that for his fellow party members, the “big news” was the fact that even in the era of the SVO and sanctions, “the theme of development has not lost its relevance.”

Proof of this, in his opinion, was the party’s success in elections to eight legislative assemblies and five victories in single-mandate constituencies of various levels.

Mr. Nechaev refrained from radical criticism of the new voting formats, but nevertheless stated that he “does not really understand” why different systems are used in remote electronic voting (DEV) in Moscow and the regions: “In general, in the regions of the DEG, where it was used, this is 20% (of all voters.— “Kommersant”), in Moscow – 80%. You can, of course, attribute it to the fact that Moscow is a modern and comfortable city, but it looks more like some kind of anomaly.” The main result of the “bright campaign” of the “New People” in Moscow, the party leader called the mandates collected from the townspeople and the formation of a team of activists of various profiles.

Policy Department