United Russia will check the level of readiness of supporters for the presidential elections

United Russia (UR) intends to check how its branches are ready to mobilize voters to participate in the presidential elections scheduled for 2024. The test will use a competition in honor of the 30th anniversary of the Constitution, which the party launched in early October this year. The primary branches of the party will have to use contacts from the mobilization base of the party, which is being prepared for the presidential elections, to participate in the competition. By the end of the year there should be 33 million people, of whom 90% should be supporters of the party and the president. United Russia has also developed and tested methods that can be used to track whether a voter from its base voted in an election.

United Russia announced the start of the online competition “30 years of the Russian Constitution – test yourself” on October 4 in its Telegram channel (recall that the current Constitution was adopted by popular vote in December 1993 – this symbolically ended the political crisis that arose as a result of the confrontation between the Supreme council and President Boris Yeltsin, which peaked in the form of an armed confrontation in Moscow on October 3–4). “Participants will have to answer ten questions about the foundations of the Constitution,” explained then the head of the central executive committee of the party and deputy secretary of the General Council of United Russia, Alexander Sidyakin. “The system selects questions at random. You have ten minutes to complete the test. The winners will be determined from those who correctly answered all the questions in the shortest possible time. They will receive valuable prizes. And each participant who passes the test will receive an electronic certificate.” The competition will last until November 30, with an award ceremony taking place in December.

According to a Kommersant source close to the leadership of United Russia, on the basis of a competition, party members plan to test how their primary branches will cope with the mobilization of potential voters for the presidential election. “As a result of the competition, we will receive a full-fledged map of regions based on their ability to truly mobilize our supporters,” explains the interlocutor.

The Kommersant correspondent also passed a test, in order to participate in which he had to enter all his data, right down to his house number according to his registration. Earlier, Vedomosti, citing a source in United Russia, also reported that the quiz on the Constitution “is also a test of the mobilization base.”

As Kommersant previously reported, United Russia began large-scale work to update its mobilization base for the 2024 presidential elections at the beginning of last year. This database is actually a list of contacts of voters loyal to the party in power and the president. People on the list regularly receive messages about the need to vote in important elections for the party. In addition, party members use technologies that allow them to check whether their supporter has reached the polling station from the base. “For this purpose, a link is sent to the contact, which can be opened only if, by geolocation, he is at the polling station,” explains Kommersant’s interlocutor. “We have a lot of supporters. But the main problem is that they do not always reach the ballot box, thinking that United Russia and its candidates will win without them.” According to the source, this and similar voting confirmation methods have already been tested in the 2023 regional elections, and with their help it was possible to confirm more than 70% of the final turnout of party activists at the polling stations.

When United Russia began work on updating the base, there were about 25 million people in it, but the problem was with the indicator of their real loyalty – this is how United Russia calls the share of party supporters in the mobilization base. At the time the update began, this share was 40%, that is, more than half of the contacts belonged to people who, in fact, were not United Russia supporters. At a joint meeting of the general and supreme councils of the party on September 14, Alexander Sidyakin reported on his intention to increase the base to 33 million supporters with a level of real loyalty of 90%. According to United Russia plans, at least 90% of these 33 million should come to the presidential elections. According to Kommersant’s source, now, after work to clarify the lists, there are about 26 million contacts in the database with a real loyalty level of 90%.

Let us recall that in April of this year, at a seminar for employees of the presidential administration, representatives of its internal political bloc named the desired target indicators for the 2024 presidential elections – 75% of votes for the candidate from the government with a total turnout of 70%. Let us recall that in the last presidential elections of 2018 and during the 2021 Duma campaign, in addition to the party campaign, corporate mobilization technologies were also widely used.

Andrey Vinokurov