Without noise and heat – Newspaper Kommersant No. 167 (7368) of 09/12/2022
[ad_1]
On Sunday evening, another single voting day (UDV) ended in Russia, within the framework of which governors were elected in 15 constituent entities of the Russian Federation and deputies of legislative assemblies in six. In addition, the composition of city councils was updated in 12 regional capitals, and lower-level campaigns were held in almost all subjects. According to preliminary estimates, the EDG-2022 did not bring any unexpected results. According to Ella Pamfilova, chairwoman of the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation, the campaign turned out to be “boring”.
The first result of EDG-2022 became known even in the afternoon: the current head of Adygea Marat Kumpilov (United Russia, ER) was re-elected for a second term. True, as in most of the republics of the North Caucasus, the head of Adygea is chosen not by residents, but by deputies of the republican parliament. The deputies of the State Council of the Republic Yevgeny Grunin (LDPR) and Alexander Loboda (“A Just Russia – For Truth”) acted as nominal rivals of Mr. Kumpilov, however, in the end, the incumbent governor was unanimously supported by all 49 parliamentarians present at the session.
Other gubernatorial campaigns, according to preliminary data, will also end with the expected victory of the current leaders of the regions.
So, according to the results of processing 92% of the protocols, the head of Buryatia, Alexei Tsydenov (ER), is gaining 86% of the vote, and his closest pursuer, a deputy of the People’s Khural (parliament) of the republic from the Communist Party, Viktor Malyshenko, 7.2%. A similar picture is in the Tomsk region, where after counting 85.3% of the ballots of the acting governor, Vladimir Mazur (ER) is in the lead with 84.1% of the vote. In second place is Galina Nemtseva, a deputy of the regional Duma from A Just Russia – For Truth (SRZP), gaining 6.3%. Slightly less confident in the election of the governor of the Sverdlovsk region is its current head Evgeny Kuyvashev (ER), who is supported by 65.4% of voters (after processing 31.7% of the protocols).
At the gubernatorial elections in the center and north-west of Russia, by the time the numbers were given, approximately 10% of the ballots had been counted, and everywhere the current leaders or interim governors were in the lead confidently and by a wide margin.
In the elections to the Sakhalin Regional Duma, where 98.8% of the protocols were counted at the time the issue went to print, United Russia is leading the party lists with 47.4% of the vote. Also, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (14.3%), the Liberal Democratic Party (9.2%), New People (8.7%), the Pensioners’ Party (6.7%) and the SRZP (5.2%) are also preliminary candidates for the region’s parliament. However, according to the party lists in Sakhalin, only ten mandates are played, and the results for 18 single-mandate constituencies will become known later.
Finally, the counting of ballots for the elections to the City Duma of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky has been completed. United Russia is also leading there, gaining 53.8% of the vote. They are followed by the LDPR (14.2%), the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (11.7%), the SRZP (7.4%) and the Pensioners’ Party (5.4%). The rest of the parties do not overcome the five percent barrier. As in Sakhalin, only ten mandates are distributed according to the lists, and twenty more – in two-mandate constituencies. The City Duma of Vladivostok, elected exclusively by the majority system, includes 23 United Russia members, two communists and a liberal democrat, as well as eight self-nominated candidates. There, too, the counting ended.
As for the voter turnout, residents of the Tambov region, a region with a traditionally high mobilization base, voted most actively in the gubernatorial elections.
As of 18:00 local time, the turnout there was 55.5%. In addition, the barrier of half of those who voted was overcome by the Saratov region, where the number of those who came to the polling stations at the same time reached 50.5%. Residents of the Ryazan region also showed high mobilization – 41.1%. In all other regions at 18:00 turnout did not reach 40%, and in Karelia, Mari El, Vladimir, Novgorod, Tomsk, Sverdlovsk and Yaroslavl regions – up to 30%.
Recall that EDG-2022 was the first when the duration of voting differed from region to region. If before the coronavirus pandemic, the expression of will always took one day, and in 2020-2021 it took three, this year its duration was determined locally. And although in most subjects the three-day gubernatorial elections were preserved, the residents of the Tomsk and Kirov regions voted for two days, and the voters of Buryatia, Mari El and the Sverdlovsk region – one. At the level of legislative assemblies, only North Ossetia “dropped out” of the three-day format, where elections to the republican parliament were two-day, and at the level of administrative centers – Gorno-Altaisk, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Vladivostok, Omsk and Tver, where it was decided to elect deputies of city councils in the old manner, one afternoon. Finally, in Kirov, the elections to the City Duma were “synchronized” with the gubernatorial elections and lasted two days.
“In our opinion, the best option is two days, but many people like three,” Central Election Commission head Ella Pamfilova said on Sunday. According to her, the three-day format “came to liking” of the voters, as it “expanded the opportunities to better plan their time.” At the same time, the CEC will analyze “all the pros and cons of each type of voting in order to better adapt to the needs of voters,” Ms. Pamfilova promised.
The mobilization effect of the three-day period is clearly visible when comparing the turnout in the gubernatorial elections with the results of five years ago. For example, in 2017 in the Saratov region, as of 18:00, only 46% of voters voted. But where the one-day period was preserved, the turnout, on the contrary, decreased: if in the 2017 elections in Buryatia at the same time 35% of the inhabitants voted, then this year only 31.9%.
Summing up the general results, Ella Pamfilova called the current election campaign lively and competitive, “but rather calm in the good sense of the word.”
So much so that the commission did not have enough reasons to analyze controversial situations live on the air of the information center, the head of the Central Electoral Commission complained jokingly: “You can say that she (the campaign.— “b”) even boring. The most striking episode was a video from polling station No. 0901 in Gelendzhik (deputies of the legislative assembly were elected in the Krasnodar Territory), depicting how the deputy chairman of the precinct commission sat on ballots filled out in favor of United Russia. The official was promptly removed from work, and Mrs. Pamfilova turned to law enforcement officers and demanded to find out who forced her to such unseemly actions.
In total, 218 ballots were declared invalid in the elections of all levels as of Sunday evening in six subjects – Moscow, Udmurtia, Krasnoyarsk Territory, Kemerovo, Moscow and Novosibirsk regions, Ella Pamfilova said: “This, of course, is an insignificant number across the country, but we report it nonetheless.” She also called on the election commissions of the regions not to rush to sum up the results, so that everyone who wishes could file complaints. “There is quite enough time until Wednesday,” the CEC chairman summed up.
Representatives of the parliamentary parties differed in their assessment of the EDG-2022.
So, the first deputy chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Yuri Afonin, told Kommersant that the elections “from the point of view of power were more technologically advanced” due to electronic and three-day voting, as well as the mobilization of state employees, therefore “outwardly violations may be less.” At the same time, he noted “significant violations” in the elections to the Legislative Assembly of the Krasnodar Territory. SRZP leader Sergei Mironov said that this year’s voting takes place “with much fewer violations” than in last year’s Duma elections, but drew attention to individual shortcomings, for example, in North Ossetia. The head of the central office of the LDPR Alexei Didenko said that the party recorded many violations in individual regions, in particular in the elections to the City Duma of Barnaul, which he called “the dirtiest” and “the worst since the 90s”, as well as “signs of stuffing” in that or North Ossetia. But the deputy secretary of the United Russia General Council, Sergei Perminov, said that, according to the inspections carried out after reports of possible violations, it can be stated that “these elections were held calmly and regularly, and an honest and clean campaign has developed in the territories.” ER Chairman Dmitry Medvedev assessed the party’s results as “worthy”: “Our and our supported candidates performed very, very confidently.”
Some candidates had enough preliminary results to celebrate the expected victory. So, the head of Buryatia, Alexei Tsydenov, “without waiting for the results of the vote,” thanked his voters for their support, separately mentioning those who came to the polling stations in national clothes. “The high level of trust obliges me to work further tirelessly, more intensively than the previous five years,” Mr. Tsydenov said. His Tomsk colleague Vladimir Mazur, who stated that the elections became a struggle of candidates not so much with each other, but with problems, did not begin to shelve gratitude: “We fought such serious rivals as indifference, apathy and despondency. We tried to restore people’s trust in the authorities and faith in themselves.” But Evgeny Kuyvashev, who attended the hockey match of Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg against Avangard Omsk after Sunday voting at the polling station, only stated that none of the journalists asked who he would work in case of defeat.
According to political scientist Rostislav Turovsky, the first results of the elections indicate an increased level of support for the current government in the person of the governors and United Russia: “We can talk about the effect of consolidation. Of course, United Russia could not count on the governor’s 80%, but its superiority over the parties of the parliamentary opposition has grown significantly. At the same time, the expert did not rule out “local deviations” in the final results, which may be associated with local protest moods. As an example, Mr. Turovsky cites the election of the mayor of Neryungri, the second largest city in Yakutia, where, according to preliminary data, LDPR candidate Ilya Gudoshnik is winning. His lead over the nominee of the EP Leonid Oleinik is less than 3%.
[ad_2]
Source link
