The count of victories is over – Newspaper Kommersant No. 168 (7369) of 09/13/2022

The election commissions of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation on Monday finished counting votes in the elections held on September 11 in the regions. According to published data, in most cases, United Russia has improved the result of five years ago, and where its performance has declined, it has compensated for this through success in single-member constituencies. In a number of cities, for example, in Tver and Nizhny Tagil, the United Russia party even formed one-party parliaments. The opposition complains about the reform of the electoral system and the “drying” of the turnout.

results gubernatorial elections can be considered more than successful for United Russia (ER). Six of her twelve candidates won over 80% of the vote: Alexey Tsydenov (Buryatia, 86.2%), Maxim Egorov (Tambov Region, 85%), Vladimir Mazur (Tomsk Region, 84.9%), Pavel Malkov (Ryazan Region). , 84.6%), Vladimir Avdeev (Vladimir region, 83.7%) and Anton Alikhanov (Kaliningrad region, 80.2%). No less convincing were two formal self-nominees supported by United Russia, Yuri Zaitsev (Mari El, 82.4%) and Mikhail Evraev (Yaroslavl Region, 82.3%). Three more United Russia members gained over 70% of the vote: Andrey Nikitin (Novgorod Region, 77%), Roman Busargin (Saratov Region, 72.3%) and Alexander Sokolov (Kirov Region, 71.9%). Finally, three United Russia candidates overstepped the bar of 60%: Artur Parfenchikov (Karelia, 69.2%), Evgeny Kuyvashev (Sverdlovsk Region, 65.8%) and Alexander Brechalov (Udmurtia, 64.4%).

The candidates from the Communist Party finished second in ten regions. In Karelia and the Tomsk region, the second place went to the representatives of A Just Russia – For Truth (SRZP), and in Mari El and the Kaliningrad region – to the Liberal Democratic Party. Finally, for the party “New People” the best result was the fourth line, which was occupied by both of its candidates. True, if the Sverdlovsk representative of the party bypassed the LDPR nominee and scored 6.5%, then the Buryat representative was the last with 2.3% of the vote.

In the elections in regional legislative assemblies ER increased the result in North Ossetia (67.9%, +8.7 p.p. compared to 2017), the Penza region (74.9%, +5.9 p.p.) and Sakhalin (47.2% , +2.6 p.p.). In the Krasnodar Territory, the percentage of its support remained unchanged – 70.8%, in the Saratov Region it decreased by 6.9 p.p., to 59.9%, and in Udmurtia – immediately by 12.1 p.p., to 51, one%.

Despite the “subsidence” in some regions, United Russia expectedly increased the total number of deputy mandates due to the reform of the electoral system, in which the number of “lists” decreased, and single-mandate members increased.

For example, in Udmurtia in 2017, 30 seats were distributed according to the majoritarian system, of which UR took 24. In 2022, their number increased to 40, and UR took 36. The situation is similar in the Saratov region: the number of districts increased from 22 to 30, and the number of single-mandate United Russia members – from 19 to 22. True, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation also took advantage of this, which will now have four “district” deputies instead of one.

The “cutting off” of the party lists played into the hands of EP where it retained or increased the list result. The Krasnodar United Russia made the most of it, which had 31 single-mandates out of 35, and now it has 41 out of 45. Sakhalin United Russia is also in the black: instead of 10 “district” mandates out of 14, they have 17 out of 18.

The Communist Party of the Russian Federation in the framework of party voting in half of the cases worsened the result, “losing” from 0.5 percentage points in the Kuban to 4.6 percentage points in the Saratov region. She showed the best figures in Udmurtia (15.6%, +0.7 p.p.), but given the reform of the electoral system and the loss of the “district” mandate, this did not improve the overall situation. The Communist Party has grown the most in North Ossetia, where all 70 deputies are elected by lists: if five years ago the Communists scored 6.6% here, now they are 12.4%.

The North Ossetian Social Revolutionaries, in turn, received 14.3%, which is 4.1 percentage points more than five years earlier. However, in 2017, the Patriots of Russia, which later joined the SRZP, scored 15.7% here. As a result, the union of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the “patriots” will have as many mandates as the “patriots” had separately, or even less. In other regions, the 2022 campaign for SRHR can be considered successful. In particular, the party will form a faction in the Sakhalin Regional Duma, where in 2017 it did not pass either on the lists or in the districts, as well as in the Krasnodar Legislative Assembly, where now it will have not only a single-mandate member, but also a “list member”. At the same time, in the Penza region, the SRHR unexpectedly failed and gained only 3.3% (-2.2 percentage points), for which party leader Sergei Mironov promised to dismiss the head of its local cell.

The Liberal Democratic Party, which conducted the first election campaign after the death of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, increased its result in the Saratov region (+1.3 percentage points) and Udmurtia (+4.6 percentage points), but “dipped” in other regions. Like five years ago, the Liberal Democrats failed to get into the Parliament of North Ossetia. For the “New People” elections to legislative assemblies turned out to be a failure. Parliamentary newcomers were only able to get into the Sakhalin Regional Duma (8.9% on the lists and victory in one constituency), and in other cases they did not overcome the barrier. By the way, Sakhalin turned out to be the only region where one of the “small” parties, the Party of Pensioners (6.7%), also entered the parliament.

Even more clearly the effect of “departization” manifested itself in the elections in city ​​councils of administrative centerswhere the number of “listed” mandates could be reduced to zero.

So, for example, they did in Gorno-Altaisk, Omsk, Yaroslavl, Vladivostok and Tver. As a result, United Russia achieved a more than confident victory here: in the Gorno-Altai city council, it received 20 seats out of 21, in Omsk – 35 out of 40, in the Yaroslavl municipality – 34 out of 38, in the city council of the previously protested Vladivostok – 23 out of 35. Finally, in In the City Duma of Tver, United Russia received an absolute maximum of 25 mandates out of 25 possible.

United Russia acted no less confidently in other large municipalities, taking, for example, all 25 mandates in the City Duma of Nizhny Tagil, the second largest city in the Sverdlovsk region. In Yelets, the largest regional center of the Lipetsk region, United Russia won in 20 districts out of 25, not allowing a single representative of the parliamentary opposition into parliament. And in the Urals Asbest, United Russia “recaptured” the City Duma from the Communist Party, winning in 17 districts out of 21 (five years ago, 11 seats went to the Communists).

Opposition in the regions explains the weak results in different ways. For example, Anatoly Dolgachev, the head of the Primorsky Territory Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, complained to Kommersant that the “preschedule” in the elections to the City Duma of Vladivostok exceeded the turnout on election day by three times. According to the leader of the Yaroslavl SRZP, Anatoly Greshnevikov, with such a low turnout in the city council elections (23.8%), “only representatives of United Russia” could win. Another reason for the weak performance of the party, he called “lack of funding.” The Omsk Regional Committee of the Communist Party believes that the results were influenced by the nomination of “twins”, the transportation of voters during early voting and the “drying” of the turnout. And in the Altai Republican Committee of the Communist Party, the failure was explained by the liquidation of party lists. “Five years ago in Gorno-Altaisk, EP also got all the single-seat candidates,” first secretary Viktor Romashkin reminded Kommersant.

Andrey Prakh, corset “Kommersant”